Soviet Ethnology and Anthropology Today 9783110856538, 9789027927255

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STUDIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY

1

SOVIET ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY

EDITED BY

YU. BROMLEY Academy of Sciences of the USSR N.N. Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnography

1974

MOUTON · THE HAGUE · PARIS

O Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this publication may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers,

Editorial Board: Yu. Bromley - editor-in-chief V. Aleksejev S. Arutjunov M. Chlenov - executive secretary I. Grigulevich E. Godiner - secretary

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague.

Contents

Preface Key to transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet

9 11

Part I. INTRODUCTION Yu, Bromley. Ethnographical Studies in the USSR, 1965-1969 . . V. Aleksejev. 50 Years of Studies in Anthropological Composition of Population in the USSR

15 31

Partn. ETHNOLOGY The Notion of"Ethnos" and Typology of Ethnic Communities Yu. Bromley. The Term Ethnos and its Definition V. Kozlov. On the Concept of Ethnic Community

55 73

Contemporary Ethnic Processes in the USSR Yu. Arutjunjan. Experience of a Socio-Ethnic Survey (Relating to the Tatar ASSR) 91 E. Vasiljeva, V. Pimenov, L. Khristoljubova. Contemporary Ethnocultural Processes in Udmurtia (Program and Method of Investigation) 105

6 Contents

Social Organization A. Pershits. Early Forms of Family and Marriage in the Light of Soviet Ethnography 123 A. Khazanov. "Military Democracy" and the Epoch of Class Formation 133 Yu. Levin. A Description of Systems of Kinship Terminology. . . 147 Problems of Culture Studies E. Markarjan. Review of the Book Ocherki teorii kultury [Essays on the Theory of Culture] 169 5. Tokarev. Methods of Ethnographic Research into Material Culture 175 S. Arutjunov. Modernization in Non-European Urbicultures . . . 195 Ethnology and Adjoining Sciences S. Bruk. Atlas of the World Population (Basic Problems of Demographic-Ethnographic Cartography) 203 M. Chlenov, D. Deopik. Toponymy and Language (On the Problem of Differentiating the Substratum of Geographical Place-Name Areas) 219

Part III. ANTHROPOLOGY Problems of Anthropogenesis and General Questions of Anthropology Ya. Roginskij. Patterns in the Links between Characteristics in Anthropology 241 V. Jakimov. Basic Trends in the Adaptive Radiation of the Apes at the End of the Tertiary and the Beginning of the Quaternary Periods 261 Problems of Race Studies V. Aleksejev. About Racial Differentiation of the Human Species. Primary Centers of Race Formation 275 G. Debets. Essay on the Graphical Presentation of the Genealogical Classification of Human Races 291 A. Zubov. Dental Anthropology and the Historical Sciences . . . 319

Contents 7

V. Bunak. Genetic-Geographical Zones of Eastern Europe by ABO Blood Groups 331 List of abbreviations

359

References

361

Preface

The scientific interests of Soviet ethnologists and anthropologists cover a broad field of topics ranging in time from anthropogenesis and sociogenesis to ethnic processes in modern society and in space embracing the whole ecumene. The publication in English of selected recent works by Soviet authors in these fields from the scientific press of the USSR is an urgent and important task. The articles contributed to this collection are either forwarding the theory of ethnology and anthropology or summarizing the results of extensive investigations in certain areas. For lack of space there are numerous works dedicated to more detailed case studies which unfortunately are outside the limits of this collection. The editors hope that the twenty articles which constitute this volume can provide our colleagues throughout the world with a sufficiently adequate though incomplete outline of main trends in the development of ethnology and anthropology in the USSR in the last decade. The recent works of Soviet ethnologists are especially focused on the main object of study in this discipline, the ethnos. They aim at illuminating the concept of the ethnos and regularities of ethnic processes both in the past and in modern times. These problems have unequivocally become the central topics in the development of theoretical ethnology for the recent decade. This volume includes several articles which we hope will draw the keen interest of many scholars: the articles of Yu. V. Bromley and V. I. Kozlov, focusing on the general theory of ethnic entities, and articles by Yu. V. Arutjunjan, I. K. Vasiljeva, V. V. Pimenov, and L. S. Khristoljubova which represent some case studies dealing with the application of some original methods on ethnic processes among the contemporary peoples of the USSR.

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Preface

The studies of social organization in primeval and early class society have undergone further development in recent years. A well-known Soviet expert in primitive society, A. I. Pershits, presents here an article which sums up certain results of long and fruitful researches of Soviet scholars in the history of the family and marriage. The article by A. M. Khazanov provides a new point of view on social organizations at the stage of the genesis of classes. Yu. I. Levin examines in his article an original method of a formal semantic analysis for kinship system terminologies. At the same time the study of culture and especially of material culture and everyday life, a traditional branch in the whole of Russian and Soviet ethnology, remains a favorite theme for Soviet scholars. E. S. Markarjan presents here a summary of his book reflecting its philosophic and culturological concepts. The oldest Soviet ethnologist, S. A. Tokarev, deals in his article with a more restricted problem — the material culture and the main principles of the methods of its study. A more limited, but still important, insufficiently elaborated approach to the study of material culture is the subject of S. A. Arutjunov's article dealing with regularities in the interaction of traditional cultural traits with modem innovations. The recent trends in the development of ethnology resulted in a number of newly emerging synthetic disciplines. Two of them, ethnic mapping and ethnic onomastics, occupy a considerable place in the works of Soviet ethnologists. Examples of such studies are treated in articles by S. I. Bruk, D. V. Deopik, and M. A. Chlenov. Ethnic or racial physical anthropology may be also regarded as a synthetic discipline and is represented in this volume by articles by the late G. F. Debets, V. P. Aleksejev, and A. A. Zubov. These works enable the reader to learn the principles of race classification which are applied in Soviet physical anthropology — the concept of two centers in the genesis of races and the utilization of odontological data in the science of the history of races. Some more generalized problems of physical anthropology are dealt with in the articles by V. V. Bunak, V. P. Jakimov, and Ya. Ya. Roginskij. The volume begins with two review articles by Yu. V. Bromley and V. P. Aleksejev aimed at introducing students of ethnology outside the USSR to the main stages in the development of Soviet ethnology and physical anthropology. The editors consider it their pleasant duty to express a deep gratitude to all institutions and persons who have rendered their assistance in the course of preparation of this book. The Editors

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PART I

Introduction

Ethnographical Studies in the USSR, 1965-1969

Yu. BROMLEY

The study of the origin, distribution, affinities, and differences of peoples is a science unto itself. In the USSR, as in many other countries, it is traditionally known as ethnography — "description of peoples". Termed as it is, ethnography is sometimes opposed to ethnology which is understood as a discipline dealing with the theoretical aspects of the study of the peoples of the world; however, the term ethnology has not gained a wide popular appeal in the USSR, and ethnography combines both the descriptive and theoretical levels. We do not possess a terminological differentiation between the study of our own people and the study of foreign peoples, and for this reason ethnography corresponds to what is covered by such disciplines as Volkskunde and Völkerkunde in the Germanspeaking countries. At the same time, the belief has long been current that in the English-speaking countries ethnography, as we understand the term, corresponds to cultural and social anthropology.1 Even though the subject matter of these two disciplines and that of ethnography are not in fact totally identical, there is some reason in their coming together because they have a lot in common and some of their fields coincide. In the Soviet Union, one of the largest multinational states, ethnographical studies have attained great momentum. The existence of the perennial traditions of ethnographical research in Russia before the 1917 Revolution was an important contributory factor. In the USSR, as elsewhere, evidence on peoples and the distinctive features of their life can be found in the earliest records (e.g., in the writings of a 7th-century Armenian geographer, in the early 12th-century Russian 1

In the USSR the term anthropology is commonly used in a narrow sense designating physical anthropology.

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chronicle Povest vremennykh let [The Tales of Time-Honored Years], etc.). Evidence of this kind has been building up for centuries. The official recognition of ethnography as a science in Russia dates from the first half of the 19th century. The most important milestone in the establishment of Russian ethnographical studies was the founding of the Russian Geographical Society with an ethnographical department in Petersburg in 1845. Since that date ethnographical material was gathered in a systematic manner; the Society maintained a special data-gathering program throughout the country. Initially the Society studied almost exclusively non-Russian nationalities of the Russian Empire, but gradually it began to concentrate more on the Russian people as well. One of the special features of ethnographical studies in the middle of the 19th century was an interest in folk art, including oral folk art, traditionally called folklore in Russia. This brought ethnography right into close contact with folkloric studies, a tradition which has largely survived to this day. It was to this contact that the manifest influence of the mythological school on the Russian ethnographical studies ofthat time was partly due. Later in the century ethnography tended to join the natural sciences. A vivid illustration of this was the founding of the Society of the Lovers of the Natural Sciences in Moscow in the 1860's, with Departments of Ethnography and Anthropology (already at that time by anthropology was usually meant the study of the variations in human physical types).* In 1867 the Society organized in Moscow the first All-Russia Ethnographical Show. The Ethnographical Department of the Society published a series of works dealing with the different peoples of Russia. In the 1870-80's the ethnographers became more interested in the study of social life — family and community. This was largely due to the practical requirements of the Russian public after the abolition of serfdom in Russia. Russian populism (narodnichestvo) which idealized the communal system was coming into its own. Among other things, the study of common law attracted much attention; this was of great practical importance since the jurisdiction of the landlords had been abolished. The study of folk art was continuing, but now involved a critical approach to the mythological school and the popularity of the "theory of borrowings" (V. V. Stasov, V. F. Miller). Scientific expeditions to non-European countries, especially N. N. Miklukho-Maklay's expedition to Oceania, also left their imprint on ethnographical studies in Russia. In the 1890's and the early part of the 20th century, the ethnographical museums at the centers (the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Petersburg, the Dashkov Ethnographical Museum in Moscow, and the * The term was simultaneously used in a wider, philosophical sense.

Ethnographical Studies in the USSR, 1965-1969

17

Ethnographical Department of the Russian Museum in Petersburg) and in the provinces became more active. This prompted interest in the study of the material life of the people. Evolutionism, which had exercised some impact in the preceding decades, now became the leading ideological stream in Russian ethnography (M. M. Kovalevsky, N. N. Kharuzin, L. Ya. Shternberg, and others). Many ethnographical traditions which were carried on in Soviet times, originated in fact in the pre-revolutionary period. There were, for example, no studies contrasting the country's dominant nation (Russia) and the other nations, a trend which was common in many countries especially in the colonialist countries. There were not sufficient grounds for that, because the status of the bulk of the Russian people (peasantry) differed little from that of the peoples living on the fringes of the empire. For the pre-revolutionary progressive Russian ethnographers it was utterly impossible to divide peoples into "historic peoples" and "non-historic peoples", nor were there conditions in Russia for the spread of racist views in ethnographical science. Up to the Revolution of 1917, ethnographical studies, it should be noted, were carried on either by single-handed amateurs or by ethnographical societies with small memberships. No system of state ethnographical establishments grew up. At the few state-sponsored ethnographical museums research was on a small scale indeed; ethnography was not taught at the universities. Of course, no single socio-political orientation of pre-revolutionary ethnographical studies was in existence. The central motive which kept the science going was the contest between the two principles: the conservative and the progressive which catered for the aspirations of the people. In ideological and theoretical matters, discord among the ethnographers was great. Even on the very concept of ethnography the views were many. Some held that the major task of ethnography was to find out the laws of man's development at the lowest stages; others defined ethnography as a science dealing with the culture of primitive peoples in general and with the survivals of this culture; and still others held that ethnography was to study the peculiarities of the material and spiritual life of individual peoples (Tokarev, 1966; Ocherki, 1956-1968). The Revolution of 1917 radically changed the conditions in which ethnography was to develop in Russia. From the start Soviet ethnography drew upon the humanistic and democratic legacy of pre-revolutionary Russian ethnography, following the example set by its best representatives who took an active part in the building of the new life. Among other things which the Soviet ethnographers inherited from their pre-revolutionary

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fellow scientists were a broad outlook and interest in all the peoples of the world. What, however, played a dominant part in the development of ethnographical studies in the post-revolutionary years was the dovetailing of these studies with the practical requirements advanced by the new social regime. The tasks of Lenin's national policy and the need for radical changes in the life and culture of the formerly backward peoples called for thorough research into the ethnic composition of their populations and the national peculiarities of their cultures. To tackle the problem, several new ethnographical centers (first in the form of various commissions and committees, and later in the form of institutes) were set up in Leningrad and Moscow during the initial Soviet years; meanwhile, most of the scientific societies in which the majority of ethnographical studies were carried on before the revolution resumed their work. Of immense importance in the organization of ethnographical research was the establishment in 1926 of the journal Etnografiya (Sovetskaya etnografiya from 1931). By the close of the 30's the ramified network of ethnographical institutions had been broadly outlined: apart from the USSR Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ethnography,3 corresponding research units in many of the Republics emerged. Local scientific manpower, including those coming from the native nationalities, were getting into their stride. In the post-war period this trend gained special momentum, and at present ethnographical teams are in existence in all Soviet Republics and in several cities of the Russian Federation (Guslistyj, 1958; Chitaja, 1948; Guliev, 1961; Akaba, 1961; Vardumjan, 1962; Vishniauskajte, 1960; Stepermanis, 1960; Vijres, 1960; Samarin, 1948; Pisarchik, 1954; Masanov, 1966; and Jershov, 1968). The museums contribute much to ethnographical research.4 Annual archaeological and ethnographical sessions of the Department of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, at which the results of field research for the past year are summarized, are of much importance in the coordination of the activity of Soviet ethnographers. Of course, the development of Soviet ethnography over the past half century is not confined merely to the improvement of the research organi8

Named in 1947 after N. N. Miklukho-Maklay, the well-known Russian explorer and ethnographer, the Institute is at present the major center of ethnographical research in the USSR. 4 This applies both to the central museums (the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the State Museum of the Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR) and to the republican museums (for example, the ethnographical museums at Tbilisi, Tartu, and Lvov). Numerous museums of regional ethnography also contribute to the ethnographical study of the country.

Ethnographical Studies in the USSR, 1965-1969

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zation, the expansion of research, and the training of scientific personnel. The major trend of this development has been the establishment and assertion of Marxist methodology in ethnography. Already nearly complete as early as the pre-war years, this process in turn revolutionized our concept of ethnography itself, as well as the major problems and the status of ethnography in the scientific world. In the first years after the 1917 Revolution, Soviet ethnography was noted for its wide divergence of theories. In the late 1920's and the early 1930's in the ethnographical field, as well as in most of the other humanities, numerous discussions were held in order to clear up the theoretical disagreements and assert Marxist principles. Despite opposite extremes, the discussions on the whole were of much value for Soviet ethnography. The heated theoretical debates undoubtedly helped Soviet ethnographers to gain a better knowledge of Marxist methodology. In the course of these debates, Soviet ethnography determined itself as a field of historical science with its own particular range of sources and specific problems. One of the distinctive features of the ethnographers' activity in those years was concentration on the problems of social organization, especially on the various forms of patriarchal and patriarchal-feudal relations. This was in large measure due to the ethnographers' striving to master MarxistLeninist methodology. Comparative historical studies of the general problems of primitive organization, the origin of exogamy, maternal clan and matriarchate, military democracy, etc., also attracted more attention (Kagarov, 1937; Krichevskij, 1936; Zolotarev, 1931, 1933; Tolstov, 1931; "Voprosy ...", 1936; and others). Data-collecting activities were carried out on a wide scale, especially in the little studied areas of the Far North (Bogoraz-Tan, 1932; Shternberg, 1933; Popov, 1931,1936; Vasilevich, 1930; and others). At the same time, a tendency was in evidence to narrow the concept of ethnography as a science, eliminating those of its fields which formally are beyond the frame of the historical sciences. As a result, studies of the contemporary way of life of the peoples of the Soviet Union and other countries came virtually at a standstill. The first post-war years witnessed a general rise of activity and a wide range of problems were studied in the field of ethnography (Tolstov, 1947b, 1957; Tokarev, 1958d). To cater for the practical problems which arose during the final stage of the war, the studies of ethnic borders and ethnic mapping began. In addition, work on the history of ethnography in the USSR and other countries was launched. The study of contemporary ways of life was advanced as a high priority problem. The belief gained

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wide currency among the ethnographers that they should and could study comprehensively contemporary culture and life by their own devices. This in turn affected the general concept of the subject matter of ethnography. More often than not, the realm of ethnography became too wide and ill-defined (Tokarev, 1958d). Yet a narrower definition of ethnography as a science dealing comprehensively with the peculiarities of culture and life of peoples was also in use (Tolstov, 1960). The study of present-day ethnic processes both in the USSR and abroad came more into the foreground in recent years. At the same time the wide spectrum of concrete sociological studies, including the study of ways of life, enabled ethnographers to concentrate on the ethnic specifics of present-day cultural and social processes. The concept of ethnography which is predominant in the USSR today is that of a science which deals with stable (ethnic) distinctive features of the everyday life of the peoples of the world, and with ethnogenesis and ethnic history up to the present time. Ethnography is regarded as one of the historical sciences, which as we have said, was already recognized during the pre-war discussions. Such a classification makes the most of the consistent historicism of Soviet ethnography derived from the methodology of historical materialism. Although Soviet ethnographers deal first of all with present-day peoples, they treat their ethnic peculiarities from a historical perspective — in the making. This, inevitably, brings into sight not only the peoples living at the moment, but also all peoples who ever existed in the past. Ethnography thus embraces the whole of man's history, exploring it from a certain ethnographical viewpoint. While regarding ethnography as one of the historical sciences, Soviet ethnographers at the same time consistently emphasize its peculiar position in the sciences at large. This peculiarity is primarily due to the fact that in order to identify distinctive and typical traits in the life of each particular people we must learn about this life as a whole and not only the socio-cultural province in which these traits make themselves most vividly manifest. Hence the ethnographical study of peoples overlaps many of the "departmental" social and natural sciences. Indeed, no sharp demarcation line can be drawn between some of these and ethnography. It is not accidental that in this country, as in many others, a whole array of the borderline disciplines has come into existence: ethnic anthropology, ethnic geography, ethnic linguistics, etc. (Debets, Leving, Trofimova, 1952; Bunak, Kozlov, Levin, 1963; Yeremejev, 1967; Agajev, 1968). Further, Soviet ethnography is closely connected with the study of folklore (Chistov, 1968). Special emphasis on the study of present-day forms of social life makes ethnography, in the opinion of Soviet scientists, cognate with

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concrete sociological studies. Indeed, a new science — ethno-sociology — has been arising at the juncture of the two sciences in recent years. The main object of the new science, Soviet scholars believe, consists of the study of the interactions between ethnic and social processes with due regard to the specifics of ethnic processes in various social groups, and the specifics of social changes in various ethnic environments (Bromley, Shkaratan, 1969). In our opinion, the science of ethnography is also remarkable for certain specific features of method: its integrated use not only of materials from all the historical sciences including archaeology, but also of data derived from diverse branches of knowledge; and its broad application of the method of direct observation of the present-day life of peoples, with special field research undertaken to this end. The dozens of expeditions commissioned annually by the central and local ethnographical institutions in all regions of the Soviet Union have gleaned a wealth of factual material, most of which first appeared in numerous publications and in museum expositions. In the half-century of its development the major research trends of Soviet ethnography have taken shape (Pershits, Cheboksarov, 1967; Bromley, 1968). One of the trends may be defined arbitrarily as the historicoethnographical study of the peoples of the world. The problems of the trend range from ethnogenesis to the present-day sociocultural and national processes; most of this range of problems are correlated with those which are studied by cultural anthropology in the English-speaking countries. The problems of ethnic history, and, in the first place, ethnogenesis, take up a special place among the general historico-ethnographical studies of peoples. The investigation of these problems is of immense significance. They in fact show that all of the present-day peoples have grown from different ethnical components and have a mixed composition, thereby refuting the racist and chauvinist allegations of "racial purity", "primeval ancestors", and "national exceptionality". For many decades now Soviet ethnographers have studied the problems of ethnogenesis in collaboration with anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists. In the past, ethnogenetic problems were settled mainly on the strength of linguistic evidence and were largely confined to the history of languages, and their origin and distribution — with priority given to the migrations of peoples. Later, some of the primitive migratory theories of the origin of many peoples were revised under the impact of N. Ya. Marr's linguistic theory. This time the tables were turned: the role of migrations was denied altogether. The discussion of the problems of linguistics in 1950 helped to clear up this misunderstanding. Further, the increasingly wider

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use of anthropological evidence enabled us to call in question the traditional conception that the sweeping majority of the migrations had entailed nearly complete destruction or ousting of the local aboriginal population (Aleksejev, Bromley, 1968). Thus ethnogenetic studies by no means unfolded in a straightforward manner. Yet the integrated approach which gained a wide appeal in the post-war years has proved fruitful in the investigation of concrete problems of the origin of separate peoples. What we know today about the origin of many of the peoples of the Soviet Union undoubtedly corresponds more to the historical reality than did the views held some two or three decades ago. This is equally true of the peoples inhabiting the most diverse historico-ethnographical regions of our country: the Baltic area, the Volga area, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, the Far East, etc. (Tokarev, 1949; Baltijskij ..., 1956; Voprosy, 1959, 1960; Trudy, 1952-1959, 1956-1960, 1960-1966; Levin, 1958; Dolgikh, 1960, 1963; Guslistyj, 1963; Gurvich, 1963; Proiskhozhdenije, 1967; Arutjunov, Sergejev, 1969). Soviet scholars also concentrated on the problems of the origin of foreign peoples, especially the peoples of America, Asia, Australia, and Oceania (Bunak, Tokarev, 1951: Levin, Cheboksarov, 1951; Olderogge, 1952; Arutjunov, 1961, 1964; Butinov, 1962; Cheboksarov, 1964; Jeremejev, 1967; Kabo, 1969). The study of the history of the ethnic and above all sociocultural peculiarities of individual peoples is a major activity of Soviet ethnographers. In the course of this study they often have to scan the culture and life of a given people as a whole, for one cannot see the general without learning the specific. Furthermore, the ethnographer usually finds himself unsupported when studying peoples who have no written language and therefore has to investigate all the aspects of the activity of such peoples. In their study of the cultures of all ethnic communities, irrespective of their number, Soviet ethnographers have done a great deal for the comprehensive treatment of the contribution which different peoples of the world have made to the overall cultural treasury of mankind. Especially indicative in this respect is the study of material culture (Kultura, 1963, 1966, 1967a). In the past fifty years a large number of special studies on the history of farming technology, settlements, dwellings, clothes, and food appeared, covering many, if not all, the peoples of the USSR (Popov, 1948; Belitser, 1951; Chitaja, 1952; Vostochnoslavjanskij, 1956; Krjukova, 1956; Gadzhieva, 1960; Antipina, 1962; Issledovanija, 1963; Stelmakh, 1964; Karakashly, 1964; Tarojeva, 1965; Krupjanskaya, Potapov,

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Terentjeva, 1961; Pershits, 1964), as well as several foreign nations (Orlova, 1958; Olderogge, 1960b; Bogatyrev, 1964; Anokhin, 1964; Atutjunov, 1965; Starikov, 1967; Tipy, 1968). Special historico-ethnographical regional atlases have been prepared by the joint efforts of ethnographers at the centers and in the republics to summarize the whole body of accumulated data on the history of the material culture of the Soviet peoples. In 1961 an atlas devoted to the peoples of Siberia came out (Levin and Potapov, 1961). In 1967 an atlas entitled The Russians was published (Russkije, 1967). In this publication, which has summarized abundant factual material, the major components of the material culture of the Soviet Union's largest people from the middle of the 19th to the early 20th century are characterized by a cartographical method. In the atlas each phenomenon is not charted statically, but developmentally (in the pre-Reform period and prior to the 1917 Revolution). In this way the atlas gives a clear idea of the major features of the unfolding of the Russians' material culture in the pre-revolutionary period. The seventy-five charts are accompanied with numerous tables and short explanatory notes. Atlases devoted to other peoples of the USSR are now in preparation (Guslistyj, Gorlenko, Priljapko, 1967; Kobychev, Robakidze, 1967; Studenetskaja, 1967). As for the spiritual culture, the attention of Soviet ethnographers is primarily drawn to mass folk art — a field which they explore together with folklorists and art students. Ethnographical studies of the different forms of folk art of the minority peoples who reveal profound individuality in their art have made special progress (Ivanov, 1954, 1961, 1969; Kilchevskaja, Ivanov, 1959; Chernetsov, 1964; Vajnshtejn, 1967). Because religion has molded many of the specific features of the presentday life of some peoples, Soviet ethnographers have consistently concentrated on separate aspects of religion. They have contributed most of all to the study of the early faiths and cults noted for their special diversity in form, as well as the problems of the origins and classification of religions (Tokarev, 1957, 1964b,c; Bardavelidze, 1957; Kryvelev, 1961; Sharevskaja, 1964; Zhukovskaja, 1965; Snesarev, 1969). In recent years the study of such traditional ethnographical subjects as folk morals and customs has become more popular (Lobacheva, 1967; Saburova, 1967b). The deciphering of some of the long-forgotten scripts is an important part of the ethnographical study of culture. The most world-renowned achievement in the field of ethnolinguistics is the work on the deciphering of the ancient Maya script (Knorozov, 1963). Research is also beginning in the study of the script of Easter Island, the proto-Indian texts originated

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by the forefathers of the Harappian culture, and the scripts of the Kitans and Jurjans (Kudrjavtsev, 1949; Olderogge, 1949; Butinov, Knorozov, 1956, 1964, 1965; Starikov, 1966). There are numerous monographs, works by expedition members and special collections (Trudy, 1952-1959, 1956-1960; Sibirskij, 19521963; Rudenko, 1955; Baltijskij, 1956; Voprosy, 1956, 1959, 1960; Potapov, 1957; Levin, 1958; Aleksandrov, 1964; Gurvich, 1966; Busygin, 1966; Saburova, 1967a; Etnografija, 1969), reflecting the results of the historico-ethnographical studies both of separate peoples and whole regions of the Soviet Union. Of particular importance among the works of this kind are the historico-ethnographical monographs concerned with the minor peoples who possess no tradition of written language. It is the ethnographer commanding the materials of direct field observation who can reconstruct the history of such peoples by means of retrospective reconstruction and drawing upon all sources, including archaeological data. Indeed, the real dedication of the ethnographers has helped to restore the history of a few dozen peoples of our country who had either no written language at all or had it in a rudimentary form in the past. Over the last five years alone there appeared historico-ethnographical monographs on the Ulchi, Veps, Archintsy, Nivkhi, Chukchi, Nentsy, Orochi, and others (Larkin, 1964; Vdovin, 1965; Pimenov, 1965; Smoljak, 1966; Khomich, 1966; Sergejeva, 1967; Taksami, 1967; Vasilevich, 1969). There are also several historico-ethnographical monographs devoted to some foreign peoples, in particular the peoples of Latin America (Cuba, 1961; Ecuador, 1963; Brazil, 1963; Chile, 1965; Venezuela, 1967; Guiana, 1969). The study of the present-day ethnic processes is today one of the central subjects of Soviet ethnographical research. The reason is obvious enough: the immense economic, social, and political changes that have taken place in the post-war period all over the world, and in particular in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, made the national and ethnic processes move at a faster rate. Interest in the present-day ethnic life of the peoples of the world has risen as never before, and the Soviet ethnographers are not remaining indiiferent. Soviet ethnographers concentrated with special care on the study of the sociocultural process in their ethnic individuality. Work in this field started as early as the 1920's and 1930's as the practical requirements of reconstructing the previously backward fringes of the country and collectivization demanded. By the close of the 30's research in this field, as we have said, was nearly at a standstill: the ethnographers' efforts shifted into the field of archaic studies. Revived in the late 1940's the

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ethnographical study of the present-day cultures and ways of life of the peoples of the Soviet Union was largely of descriptive nature. Much progress on a wider scale was made in this field in the late 1950's and first half of the 1960's. Several monographs on the collective-farm way of life of the Russians, Tadziks, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Latvians, Kirghizes, and other peoples of the Soviet Union were prepared and published in this period (Kultura, 1954, 1964, 1967b, 1968; Sukhareva, Bikzhanova, 1955; Selo, 1958; Byt, 1958; Terentjeva, 1960; Semja, 1962; Vardumjan, Karapetjan, 1963; Anokhina, Shmeleva, 1964a; Kuvenjova, 1966; Kubanskije, 1967, etc.; Krupjanskaja, Potapov, Terentjeva, 1961; Potapov, 1962; Vinnikov, 1969). The scope of research gradually became wider: the lives of workers, and later of the whole of urban population, came to the fore as subjects for research (Krupjanskaja, 1960; Annaklycheb, 1961; Zinich, 1963; Krupjanskaja, Rabinovich, 1964; Anokhina, Shmeleva, 1964b; Chyrakzada, 1965; Kogan, 1967; Etnograficheskije, 1968; etc.). Methods of investigation improved as well. The study of exceedingly complex processes of modern life called for the collection of material on a mass scale; scientific questionnairing and computer techniques came into play (Rozhdestvenskaja, 1964; Anokhina, Shmeleva, 1968). What kind of ethnographical research should be carried on in the present-day culture and life of highly developed societies also received theoretical treatment in recent years (Tokarev, 1967a, b). At the same time, the problem of the relationship between ethnography and sociology in the study of present-day sociocultural processes is becoming increasingly compelling. Tentative yet vigorous steps in the field of ethnosociological investigation of these processes in the peoples of the USSR are being taken (Arutjunjan, 1968). Of immense scientific interest are the ethnographical studies (drawing upon the evidence of linguistics and census records) of such processes of national consolidation as the disappearance of former isolation and seclusion, the confluence of separate cognate ethnic formations into nations, and the merging of small national groups into closely-knit ethnic communities. Studies of such vital ethnic processes as nationally mixed marriages, relationships between the native language and ethnic selfconsciousness, bilingualism, etc. also made special progress in recent years (Gardanov, Dolgikh, Zhdanko, 1961; Smoljak, 1963; Zhdanko 1964; Gantskaja, Terentjeva, 1965; Monogarova, 1967; Smirnova, 1967; Gurvich, 1967; Terentjeva, 1969;'Vasiljeva, 1969). The study of the sociocultural and modern ethnic processes abroad, and in particular in Asia (Bruk, Cheboksarov, 1961; Etnicheskije, 1963; Ivanov, 1967; Cheboksarov, 1966; Arutjunov, 1968) and Africa (Potekhin,

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1955, 1957; Smirnov, 1956; Ismagilova, 1963, Andrianov, 1964, 1967), are gaining more momentum. Work on the study of the present-day ethnic processes in the U.S.A., Canada, and Latin American countries has begun (Natsii, 1964; Berzina, 1968; Bogina, 1968). The study of the present-day ethnic life of West European peoples is gradually getting into its stride (Kultura, 1967a; Bromley Kashuba, 1969). Ethno-demographical and ethno-geographical studies of modern peoples have become popular in recent years in the USSR. For example, several methods of the chart imposition of various ethnic and demographical indexes have been devised (Kushner [Knyshev], 1950; Terletskij, 1953). The new techniques enabled the ethnic charts of all parts of the globe to be completed within a relatively short time (Bruk, 1959a,b, 1960; Andrianov, 1961; Berzina, Bruk, 1962, etc.). The ethnic charting of the little investigated regions received special attention. Also, the summarizing chart The Peoples of the World (Andrianov, Berzina, Bruk, Vinnikov, Kamenetskaja, Kozlov, 1961) and The Atlas of the Peoples of the World (Atlas, 1964), which incorporated the results of many years of research, have been published. The most significant outcome of ethnodemographic research is the summarizing work entitled The Numbers and Distribution of the Peoples of the World (Chislennost, 1962), which furnishes a detailed description of the national composition of the population of all countries of the world, as well as the numbers of the different peoples and their territorial distribution. The investigation of separate concrete ethnic and sociocultural processes and developments of different peoples of the world involves in the Soviet Union the elaboration of methodological matter of general nature. Thus, to understand the general laws of the development of specific features in the culture of different peoples of much importance is the doctrine developed by Soviet ethnographers on economic-cultural types and historico-ethnographical regions. In the first case the reference is to definite complexes of economy and culture, each of which is simultaneously basic to several peoples living sometimes in different parts of the ecumene. Although these complexes build up independently in different peoples, they prove to be uniform in type by virtue of approximately the same socio-economic levels of development and similar environments. By historico-ethnographical (or rather historico-cultural) regions are meant separate parts of the ecumene, the populations of which reveal similar sociocultural peculiarities by virtue of the community of socioeconomic development, sustained intercourse, and reciprocal influence (Levin, Cheboksarov, 1955; Andrianov, 1968). In recent years Soviet ethnographers also concentrated on the the-

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oretical elaboration of such ethnic processes and problems essential for understanding such general laws as the interrelation of cultures, the role of continuity, and innovation in the development of culture (Artanovskij, 1967; Pimenov, 1967). Soviet ethnographers also took an active part in the theoretical work which recently was launched on the typologization of ethnic communities (Tokarev, 1964a; Kozlov, 1967a,b, 1969; Lashuk, 1967b; Cheboksarov, 1967; Khomich, 1969; Bromley, 1969). Special emphasis in this field is placed on the notion of ethnic community itself. Soviet ethnographers understand it in a wider sense than the term people because ethnic community can be applied both to a group of peoples cognate in language and culture and to a part of a people with language and cultural individuality. Apart from the whole complex of historico-ethnic studies of the peoples of the world, the study of the history of society is a field of primary importance in Soviet ethnography (this field corresponds, to a certain extent, to social anthropology in the English-speaking countries). At the early, archaic stages of social development in which production and family life are welded together, ethnic specifics permeate all life. For this reason the ethnographical study of pre-class and early class society usually covers all provinces of social activity. This in turn makes it possible to use ethnographical evidence obtained in the course of direct observation of archaic phenomena in order to reconstruct primitive history. The identification of specimens of man's pre-class stages plays a major role in the elaboration and substantiation of the Marxist conception of social development. Soviet ethnographers from the very beginning focused their attention on primitive history, a field which they explored in collaboration with archaeologists and anthropologists. Over the past decade a vast amount of fresh evidence indicating the historical versatility of clan organization has been collected and put into scientific circulation by Soviet ethnographers; for example, the wide spread of dual organization as one of the basic features of the primeval clan has been proved. The later forms of primitive communal organization has been investigated more thoroughly: the complex structure of patriarchal clan has been ascertained, the typologization of the extended family started and abundant evidence on the segmentized form of this family — the so-called patronomy — has been brought to light and summarized (Zolotarev, 1931, 1939, 1964; Anisimov, 1936; Kisljakov, 1936; Kosven, 1948, 1957, 1963; Fainberg, 1964; Semenov, 1966b; Krjukov, 1967a; Robakidze, 1968; Bromley, 1968c; Voprosy, 1936; Rodovoje, 1951; Problemy, 1960). The ethnographical study of military democracy and domestic serfdom

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has been of major importance in disclosing the concrete ways of the transition from pre-class to class society (Tolstov, 1935a; Averkieva, 1941,1961; Potekhin, 1951; Kosven, 1960; Tokarev, 1958c; Razlozhenije, 1968). As the materialist conception of primitive history developed and crystallized, it became clear that some of the particular contentions advanced by L. H. Morgan were obsolete. The elaboration of these contentions, a trend which began as early as the pre-war years and gained special popularity in the recent period, is all the more important since the attempts to disprove the materialist conception of primitive history is usually connected with the ascribing of Morgan's erroneous contentions to Marxism. In the light of present-day ethnographical evidence, the pattern of development of the marriage relationship in the primitive family has been in particular greatly specified, leaving out of the court Morgan's hypothetically reconstructed stages of consanguine family and punaluan family (Tokarev, 1929; Zolotarev, 1940; Kosven, 1946; Olderogge, 1951; Tumarkin, 1954, etc.; Pershits, 1967). Many Soviet ethnographers refused to accept Morgan's view that the origin of exogamy is due to conscious efforts to avoid the harmful consequences of incest (Zolotarev, MSa; Zhakov, 1933; Tolstov, 1935b; Olderogge, 1947; Butinov, 1951); however, there is no single viewpoint as yet among Soviet ethnographers on this problem which is of vital importance in understanding the causes and mechanism of the transformation of the human herd into a clan community. In the light of recent ethnographical and archaeological evidence it was also necessary to specify, as F. Engels foresaw, Morgan's periodization of primitive history. In the course of the post-war discussions, a number of new periodizations have been suggested (Tolstov, 1946; Kosven, 1952; Pershits, 1960; Butinov, 1960; Semenov, 1965a; Averkieva, 1967). Although the question has not yet been settled, the major result is already obvious. It is well known that this periodization must first of all be based on sociological indexes and not on cultural-historical ones. Among other matters which have given rise to lively discourse are the relationships of clan and clan community, the sequence of the rise of matrilineal and patrilineal computation, the historical place of disclocal marriage, the patterns of early forms of marriage relations, etc. (Olderogge, 1947; 1960a; Likhtenberg, 1960; Butinov, 1962; Semenov, 1965b; Krjukov, 1967b, etc.). The study of archaic forms of social life, which survived in class and above all in early class societies, is closely associated with the elaboration

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of the problems of primitive organization. Perhaps the most important contribution which Soviet ethnographers have made in this field is the study of nomadic social organization (Tolstov, 1934; Bernshtam, 1934; Potapov, 1947,1954; Abramzon, 1951; Efendiev, Pershits, 1955; Pershits, 1961a; Lashuk, 1967a,c). It is also necessary to mention the ethnographers' active participation in the discussion on early class society, as well as their contribution to the study of various types of community. The introduction of abundant new material characterizing various types of community and disclosing their roles in the life of peoples of diverse regions of the globe is another subject of attention (Karapetjan, 1958; Kharadze, 1960-1961; Maretin, 1961; Gardanov, 1967; Obsjina, 1967; Butinov, 1968, etc.). It is worthwhile emphasizing that research became especially lively in recent years in the USSR in the study of Soviet ethnography (Ocherki, 1956,1963,1965,1968; Tokarev, 1966). Foreign studies of ethnographical nature also have been investigated on a wide scale in the post-war decades, including works on social and cultural anthropology, and ethnology. Several papers published in periodicals and special collections, e.g., Modern American Ethnography, are devoted to their analysis (Bibliograflja, 1967). It is also necessary to draw attention to the fight of Soviet ethnographers against racists who sometimes try to derive their arguments not only from anthropology but also from ethnography. Matured as long ago as the pre-war period, the activity of Soviet ethnographers in this field recently took a new lease on life when the collective works Protiv Rasizma [Against Racism] (Moscow, 1967), Net-Rasizmu! [Racism. NO!] (Moscow, 1968), and the collection Dokumenty oblichajut Rasizm [Documents Exposing Racism] (Moscow, 1968) were published. International contacts of Soviet ethnographers became especially wide in the post-war years. This was largely due to the 7th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographical Sciences held in Moscow in 1964 and attended by about two thousand Soviet and a thousand foreign scholars from fifty-five countries (Kitogam, 1965; Gurvich, 1965; Sokolova, 1965). The Soviet delegation took an active part in the work of the 8th International Congress of Archeological and Ethnographical Sciences held in Tokyo and Kyoto in 1968 and presented more than forty reports on a wide variety of ethnographical, anthropological and folkloristic matters (Averkijeva, Arutjunov, Bromley, 1969; Bromley, 1969a). The cognitive significance of historico-ethnographical knowledge predetermined the Soviet ethnographers' close concern with the creation

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of summary descriptions of peoples in the form of summarizing works, textbooks, and popular science fiction. In particular, work on textbooks and teaching aids has made appreciable progress in recent years (Tokarev, 1958a; Gromov, 1966; Knyshenko, 1965; Kozlova, 1967; Aleksejev, Mongajt, Pershits, 1968). Essays in General Ethnography, a five-volume popular-science publication covering all the peoples of the world, has been completed (Ocherki, 1957; Zarubezhnaja, 1959, 1966; Aziatskaja, 1960; Jevropejskaja, 1968). The thirteen-volume series The Peoples of the World (in eighteen books) under the general editorship of S. P. Tolstov was completed in 1966 and in a way summed up the development of Soviet ethnography. Each volume in this series furnishes detailed evidence based on the most recent sources about the ethnic composition of the population, the socio-cultural peculiarities of different peoples, as well as material on the history of their culture from ancient times to the present day (Tolstov, 1954-1966; Narody, 1956a, 1959, 1954, 1965b, 1964, 1964-1965a, 1962, 1957, 1956b, 1962-1963b, 1966, 1963a; Chislennost, 1962). In their efforts to continue the thorough study of man's multifaceted image, Soviet ethnographers are convinced that such a study contributes to better international understanding.

Fifty Years of Studies in Anthropological Composition of Population in the USSR

V. ALEKSEJEV

Following A. Retzius's work on the use of the cranial index for the classification of skulls, measurements have become an integral part of anthropological science and the main method of anthropological studies. Fundamentals of Cranioscopy by K. Karuss, a German anatomist (Kanajev, 1963), which appeared in Russian translation in 1844, was among the first publications in this language to contain measurements applied to anthropology. The impact of this book on further progress was, however, insignificant, much like that of K. Baer's illustrious papers in craniology and his large-scale, concentrated effort aimed at setting up a collection of skulls representative of peoples inhabiting Russia. On the whole, the anthropological characteristics of the contemporary population of Russia were unknown. Purposeful investigations in this direction had not actually begun before 1863 when the Society of Lovers of Nature Study, Anthropology, and Ethnography — comprising an Anthropology Department — was established in Moscow. It was then one of Europe's first scientific anthropological associations. Headed by A. P. Bogdanov, later followed by D. N. Anuchin, the Anthropology Department covered a wide field by its extensive activities. New aspects continue to come to light which had been omitted in the numerous historiographic and memorial papers concerned with the Department. This agency succeeded in drawing the attention of the Russian public to anthropological science, in procuring the necessary funds, and in sending large parties to various remote places of our country to undertake anthropological studies of the population. Discussions of the results obtained by these parties can be seen in the voluminous First published in Sovetskaja etnografija NS (1967)

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Proceedings of the Anthropology Department which contain both collections on specific topics of anthropologies of individual peoples and large monographs (Gladkova, 1963). Before the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, the Anthropology Department of the Society of Lovers of Nature Study, Anthropology, and Ethnography was without doubt the country's central anthropological agency which rallied the few peripheral specialists and set an example to be followed by most other anthropological associations and institutions. These included the Anthropological Society of the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, the Russian Anthropological Society under Moscow University, the Society of Natural Scientists and the Society of Archaeology, History, and Ethnography under the University of Kazan, and the Caucasian and East Siberian Branches of the Russian Geographical Society (Aleksejev, 1964). Nearly every effort in the investigation of the anthropological composition of the peoples inhabiting Russia was concentrated within the above institutions since anthropology was not given the official status of a self-sustained discipline, either in the universities or at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and had no official control agency whatsoever. Collected materials were primarily published in the Russkij antropologicheskij zhurnal (Russian Anthropological Journal) started in 1900. Besides the authors of numerous small-size publications on the anthropologies of individual peoples, one can recall many Russian anthropologists who have made the study of the anthropological composition of Russia the goal of their entire lives. R. F. Oerkert, I. I. Pantukhov, N. V. Giltchenko, and A. N. Gavakhov worked in the Caucasus; N. Yu. Zograff, V. V. Vorobjov, D. N. Anuchin, Yu. D. Talko-Grintsevich, A. G. Rozhdestvenskij, K. N. Ikov, F. K. Volkov, E. M. Chepurkovskij, and others wrote on the anthropologies of Russians and other Eastern Slavs; much fruitful research in the anthropology of the peoples inhabiting the Volga Basin was carried on by N. M. Malijev, S. M. Chugunov, and M. M. Khomjakov; A. P. Fedchenko, N. L. Zeland, A. N. Kharuzdin, and A. A. Ivanovskij were engaged in the anthropology of Central Asia within and outside Russia; the anthropological types of Siberian natives were studied by P. G. Matsokin, K. L Gorosjenko, Yu. D. Talko-Grintsevich, I. I. Majnov, etc. Collected facts enabled Ivanovskij to write the first general paper on the anthropology of Russia which has been severely criticized (and with sufficient reason) from the methodological point of view, but which till now remains an invaluable source of information concerning the level of anthropological knowledge about peoples inhabiting Russia in pre-revolutionary times (Ivanovskij,

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1904). Some years later Ivanovskij published an additional list of bibliography on the anthropology of Russia in his supplement to the anthropological synopsis of the entire world (Ivanovskij, 1911). What, then, were the methodological standards of these numerous studies? On the whole, they conformed to contemporary scientific requirements. Subsequent results provided proof to the effect that even well-coordinated programs for the collection of anthropological data cannot fully eliminate subjectivism and lack of compatibility in information gained by different authors. Naturally enough, such subjectivism was characteristic of all the pre-revolutionary studies, and even more so when the methods applied varied widely and even measurement programs could not be coordinated. The situation was further aggravated when inadequate sampling in some investigated groups hindered comparisons of specific anthropological features peculiar to individual peoples and excluded satisfactory conclusions concerning their genetic relations. One should be careful, therefore, in one's analyses of the anthropological composition of the Soviet Union when using papers written by pre-revolutionary authors. The above criticism in no way implies that no real achievements were made at that time in the field of method and gaining knowledge against a generally poor background. One must recall D. N. Anuchin's excellent paper on the stature of different local Russian groups based on anthropological measurements of recruits taken by draft boards (Anuchin, 1889; Bunak, 1932a). This classic study was perhaps the first in anthropology to provide a description of the spatial variations of a parameter based on uniform data, and it laid the foundations of the geographical method in the analyses of races. The works of S. I. Rudenko and E. M. Chepurkovskij are another example of fruitful studies immediately before the October Revolution. Though Rudenko's program of Bashkir studies differs greatly from that adopted at present, the elaborateness of his program and the extremely representative broad coverage of diverse groups make his monograph a unique source of information about the anthropological composition of the Bashkir people even today (Rudenko, 1916). Chepurkovskij's results, drawn from his study of thousands of individuals living throughout nearly the entire habitat of the Russian people, enabled him to prove beyond doubt existing differences between the inhabitants of different areas based on head indices and skin color (Chepurkovskij, 1913). His papers are marked by highly correct methods and strict conformity to fact. Chepurkovskij made a valuable contribution to the geographical method, and was the first (fifteen years before the British biometrists) to demonstrate the

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incompatibility of results provided by different authors. He was also among the first to analyze and demonstrate the dissimilarity between intergroup and intragroup correlations, etc. Thus some advances in methods gained by pre-revolutionary anthropologists and some of the factual information collected by them have not yet lost their significance.

THREE STAGES IN THE HISTORY OF SOVIET ANTHROPOLOGY A final periodization of the history of anthropological studies in the USSR is not expected to be finally decided upon before a complete history of such studies, based on the exhaustive utilization of all available sources, has been written. At present a discussion of the major phases of such studies can be found only in more or less detailed articles devoted to certain memorial dates in the history of our State. In accordance with an already established tradition, three periods are generally distinguished (Levin, 1947; Debets, 1957). The initial period of fifteen years began on the date of the Great October Socialist Revolution and lasted till 1932 when the reorganized Antropologicheskij zhurnal (Anthropological Journal) resumed publication after a year's break. This period was marked by some significant events. The country's first Chair of Anthropology was established at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University in 1919, which also established the Anthropological Institute and Museum in 1922. Besides Moscow, active anthropological centers started operating in the Ukraine under Kharkov University and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, and in Leningrad in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The theoretical standards of work carried on by the above centers differed but little from those of pre-revolutionary times, even though their methods had by then been raised to a noticeably higher level, particularly in Moscow University. Higher theoretical standards in anthropological studies and a trend towards the practical application of their results to immediately meeting the needs of Socialist construction work are characteristic of the period to follow. The Fourth Congress of Zoologists, Anatomists, and Histologists held in Kiev in 1930 was a landmark: its Anthropology Section brought fundamental issues of Soviet anthropological theory to the fore for discussion. In this period, temporarily discontinued by the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, many major advances

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were made: theories of race and race analysis took shape, the labor anthropogenetic theory was developed and was improved in a number of respects, and some important papers on the cardinal problems of human morphology appeared. Following the war Soviet anthropologists were provided with new possibilities for progress in their science. More institutions were set up: an Anthropology Department and later the Laboratory of Plastic Reconstruction of Face from Skull emerged at the in 1943 reorganized Institute of Ethnography, USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. This new Department concentrated on the study of the anthropological composition of the country's population; its standards were much superior to those of the pre-war period. General anthropological surveys of individual peoples were replaced by more thorough investigations of particular ethnic groups distinguished within peoples and investigation of local variations; in other words, it was a transition to much more detailed and thorough analyses of the spatial variability of anthropological parameters. Alongside these transformations, the overall volume of research showed a sharp rise; it was now facilitated by the new centers of anthropology within the Republican Academies of Sciences in Kiev, Tbilisi, Baku, Riga, Tallin, Alma-Ata, and Dushanbe. In Kiev and Tbilisi these centers were given the status of independent units, whereas in the other places anthropologists worked within the ethnographic departments of their respective archaeological and historical institutes. In the early sixties when preparations were underway for the forthcoming Seventh International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences to be held in Moscow, a new trend took shape among Soviet anthropologists: the application of physiological research techniques to anthropological investigations, similar to what was occurring elsewhere at the time. Anthropologists became morphophysiologically rather than morphologically-minded. True, such studies had been sometimes undertaken in the USSR in the earlier periods, during the first and second stages, but they were not resumed after the war when geneticallyoriented research was practically eliminated. After the Congress this trend gradually gained in strength; now every anthropological institution of the country is pursuing an extensive program of study of the peoples of the USSR with respect to physiological features such as blood groups, serum types, the phenylthiocarbamide taste test, color blindness, oxygen and basal metabolism, etc. Morphological studies proper also increased in scope, as well as odontological and dermatoglyphic investigations. The broader and more solid foundation of anthropological pursuits

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makes them closely related to populational human genetics. All this shaped the outlines of the fourth stage in the history of Soviet anthropology starting from the early sixties, which can only be spoken of rather tentatively as yet.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPEDITIONS OF THE FIRST STAGE Even though many new anthropological centers were set up during this initial period, the organizational level of studies on the anthropological composition of the population of the USSR cannot be spoken of as having assumed a consistently planned pattern. Most of the expeditional undertakings ofthat time primarily reflected the individual inclinations of their initiators. All these expeditions can be classified into two categories: those sent by the central institutions to various parts of the country, and those locally-arranged parties led by peripheral scientists within their own national Republics. The results of this collection effort appeared in print partly in the years immediately following fieldwork and partly in the subsequent period. Moscow-based anthropologists extended their activities into both near and remote regions of the country. In Eastern Europe they followed Chepurkovskij in studying diverse spatial Russian groups. Unfortunately, a greater part of the materials collected never appeared in print (Bunak, 1932c); nevertheless, they contributed to a fairly representative overall picture of the geographic variability of anthropological features drawn for Eastern Europe and made it possible to formulate a satisfactorily detailed classification of race variations among the Eastern Slavs. The genetic relations between these variants were mostly approached on a speculative basis because the necessary paleoanthropological information was then available in at best fragmentary form (Bunak, 1932b; Debets, 1934). The anthropological type of the Russian people was studied not only in general for the entire nation, but also with particular emphasis on certain ethnic groups which are of specific interest for the ethnic history of the Russian people due to their peculiar traditions (Bunak, 1922). At the same time expeditions sent by the Institute of Anthropology of Moscow University worked among the Finnish-speaking neighbors of the Russians of the Volga Basin. V. V. Bunak's paper referred to above distinguishes a peculiar anthropological type of the Vyatka-Kama area which is characteristic of these peoples and is expected to have formed by noticeable interbreeding with Mongoloid elements.

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Siberia was another field of activity for Moscow anthropologists. Using modern techniques, Bunak began collecting data on Tuvinian anthropology (Bunak, 1928b); in the early 1930's*, M. G. Levin obtained much anthropometric information (which appeared in print two decades later) on the indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Evenks and Evens. Particularly fruitful were expeditions lead by A. I. Jarkho who covered every ethnic group of the Altai-Sayan Highlands. It was during these expeditions that the techniques of measurement and determination of descriptive parameters emerged and proved worthwhile. They were subsequently made the basis of almost all studies carried on by Soviet scientists. These were summed up in Metodika antropologicheskikh issledovanij (Methods of Anthropological Studies) edited by Bunak, a well-known guide to methodology which has appeared in three volumes. In the Volga Basin and the Urals area where Europoids contact Mongoloids, P. I. Zenkevich studied the Udmurt, Man, and Chuvash peoples; he published his findings in the following decade. Active studies in Transcaucasia were led by Bunak, and in the North Caucasus by V. I. Levin. Research in the anthropological composition of the population of the Soviet Union in this period is not to be reduced to what was done by Moscow anthropologists in spite of the wide scope and range of their field work. In Leningrad fruitful results were obtained by D. A. Zolotarev who collected much anthropological information on the peoples inhabiting the North European part of the USSR — the Karels, Saamo, and some groups of Russians. B. N. Vishnevskij scrutinized the distribution of blood type ABO factors among many peoples of the USSR (Rubashkin, 1929). In Soviet Central Asia a program of many years was started by L.V. Oshanin who published his findings on the Uzbeks and Kirghizes in the late twenties (Oshanin, 1927-1928; Oshanin, Jasevich, 1929). He proposed a promising, though at that time speculative, hypothesis concerning the dolichocephalic ancient settlers of Central Asia (Oshanin, 1926,1928). A group of F. K. Volkov's followers worked in the Ukraine.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPEDITIONS AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THE POPULATION OF THE USSR DURING THE SECOND STAGE Chronologically, the beginning of this period coincides with the appearance of A. I. Jarkho's paper on unification in the definition of descriptive parameters (Jarkho, 1932b). His article, supplied with a large

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number of graphic illustrations, contained an exhaustive description of models to be used in describing the structure of soft facial tissue. Bunak's well-known book of Γ941 contained a detailed representation of the anthropometric technique. These two events are characteristic of the immense interest in the methods to be applied in anthropological studies of the Soviet Union during the pre-war decade. Rapid accumulation of relevant facts occasionally supplied by ethnographers helped realize infrequent incompatibility of data collected by different scientists which posed the need for careful control of compliance with the methodological requirements. Studies in the anthropology of Eastern Europe continued on a large scale. M. A. Gremjatskij and P. I. Zenkevich examined the KomiPermyaks of Inveny, the first among the Komi groups investigated by Soviet anthropologists after N. M. Malijev (Gremjatskij, 1941). G. F. Debets, P. I. Zenkevich, T. A. Trofimova, and N. N. Cheboksarov worked among diverse Russian entities within the so-called Eastern Great Russian habitat (Debets, 1933) in the region enclosed by the Volga and Vetluga Rivers (Aleksejeva, 1956) and in the European North of the USSR. Debets published extensive information on the anthropology of the Mordvinians and the Vepsas; Cheboksarov wrote on the Komi and the Kalmyks; Trofimova on the Tatars of West Siberia; Trofimova and Cheboksarov on the Mansi (1941); and S. A. Shluger studied the Moldavians (1936). The significance of these concrete materials far exceeds that of their narrow specific fields — they formed the basis for the reconstruction of the history of anthropological types and elucidation of their interaction in the genealogical aspect (Cheboksarov, 1936c; Debets, 1941). In Soviet Central Asia Oshanin continued his fruitful studies covering more and more peoples. He obtained information on the local variation in anthropological features which is highly important for this region since isolation of these traits is characteristic of these parts. Oshanin released his findings in print soon after collection; they became available to the anthropological community within a short time and the results of their further development were applied in ethnogenetic programs. Concurrent with Oshanin, studies in Soviet Central Asia were conducted by Jarkho among the Kirghizes, Turkmenians, Uzbeks, and Kara-Kalpaks (Jarkho, 1933a, b, 1952) and by V.V. Ginzburg among Tadzik highlanders. The latter author published his results in a separate monograph (Ginzburg, 1936, 1937a, 1949). Jarkho also studied the Azerbaidzanians in the Caucasus (Jarkho, 1932a). In addition to the work of Trofimova, several expeditions operated in

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the Western regions of Siberia. Among these one of the most noteworthy was that led by Ya. Ya. Roginskij and M. G. Levin to the Evenki of the Baikal area. Their anthropological survey of the Evenki made it possible to discover a peculiar anthropological type distinct from that of the Central Asian Mongoloids, which later proved to be widespread among Siberian Mongoloids (Roginskij, 1934). Fruitful were A. M. Zolotarev's studies along the Amur River (Zolotarev, 1941), Debets' among the Selkups, and Shluger's among the Nentsi (Shluger, 1941). Debets is the author of the in 1934 published classification of Siberian Mongoloids later renounced by the author himself as inadequately supported by facts since it had been based primarily on the cranial parameter. For its time, the classification was progressive and played an important role as one of the first attempts at classifying all available information concerned with the anthropological composition of Siberia. In addition to anthropometry and anthroposcopy, a prominent place in the programs of anthropological expeditions was occupied by collection of data in physiological anthropology. Thus, Ginzburg accumulated limited but highly representative information on the variations of ABO blood type factors among Tadzik highlanders and Turkmenians. His work is even now referred to for illustrations of sharp dissimilarities in a single feature compared for neighboring settlements isolated from one another (Ginzburg 1934, 1937b). He also undertook a comprehensive study of blood pressure among Tadzik highlanders (Ginzburg, 1936). Cheboksarov investigated variations of the ABO blood type factors and color blindness among the Komi (Cheboksarov, 1936b). Extensive dermatoglyphic research was carried out by M. V. Volotskij, who not only published numerous papers on methods used in dermatoglyphy but also compiled a representative survey of dermatoglyphic variations characteristic of many peoples, including those living in the USSR (Volotskij, 1937, 1941).

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES OF THE POPULATION OF THE USSR DURING THE THIRD STAGE Many publications printed immediately after World War II presented materials collected prior to the war. For example, Trofimova's fundamental monograph on the ethnic anthropology of the Tatars and Nogai appeared in print in 1949. Other papers presented the results of programs started before the war; an anthropological study of the Kazakhs (Ginz-

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burg, Debets, Levin, Cheboksarov, 1952) is an example. However, the third stage in the development of Soviet anthropology has a distinctive feature of its own, as far as studies in the anthropological composition of the USSR is concerned: investigation of the bodily parameters characteristic of various peoples was now raised to the status of a thorough analysis mandatory for all component ethnic groups. Thus it was only during the third period that spatial variability of anthropological parameters across the territory of the Soviet Union was finally given detailed and thorough consideration. During the period 1952-1954 alone the Anthropological Party of the Joint Baltic Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition, set up by the Archaeology and Ethnography Institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Institutes of History of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Academies of Sciences, covered over twenty Estonian, Lett, and Lithuanian spatial entities. The results of the study were summed up in a special book by M. V. Vitov, K. Yu. Mark, and Cheboksarov published in 1959. R. Ja. Denisova studied the Livonians (Denisova, 1956), Letts, Eastern Lithuanian groups, and Belorussians (Denisova, 1963); Yu. M. Aul published ample data on Estonian anthropology which he had gathered over many years (Aul, 1964d). He also studied the Letts (Aul, 1958, 1964b), Russians living in the North European part of the USSR (Aul, 1964a), and the Vod' and Izhora groups (Aul, 1964c). Vitov worked among the Saamo, Karels, and Russians of the North European part of the country, but, unfortunately his extensive collections have been made public only through partial publications (Vitov, 1964). Still unpublished are detailed anthropological data collected by Mark on the anthropology of all the Finno-Ugrian peoples living in the USSR, except the Mordvinians whose anthropological type was discussed in a special article (Mark 1960), collected by Mark. Bunak worked in South Belorussia (Bunak, 1956a) and made a survey of the population in Transcarpathia (Bunak, 1948). A comprehensive study of the entire population in the Ukraine was not undertaken before an Anthropology Department was set up within the Institute of Arts, Folklore and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. It took only a few years to cover every region of the republic in large-scale expeditional activities throughout the Ukraine in search of anthropological information. A summary of all collections was made in a separate monograph by V. D. Djachenko (1965). Somewhat earlier this author studied the Gagauz (Djachenko, 1953). The first post-war findings in the anthropology of the Russians were obtained by Aleksejeva in the Upper Volga region where, according to the chronicles, the ancient

Anthropological Composition of Population in the USSR

41

tribes of Muroma and Meshchera used to live (Aleksejeva, 1956, 1958). She also surveyed the Mishari Tatars (Aleksejeva, Vasiljev, 1959) and Chuvashes (Aleksejeva, 1955). The bulk of the anthropological survey of the Russians was carried on by the Russian Anthropological Expedition organized by the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which operated in the late fifties and early sixties under the general guidance of Bunak; the fieldwork was headed by Aleksejeva. The results gained were published in the form of a book (Proiskhozhdenije, 1965; Aleksejeva, 1965). Our review of studies undertaken in the Eastern Europe part of the USSR will be sufficiently complete if we mention A. N. Puljanos' paper on the Karaims (Puljanos, 1963) and R. S. Levman's on the Moldavians (Levman, 1948, 1950). In the Caucasus, M. S. Akimova, M. A. Bulatova, and N. N. Miklashevskaja were the first to resume studies after the war. Akimova and Bulatova worked among the Avars and Lezgins (Akimova, Bulatova, 1947; Akimova, 1952), and Miklashevskaja among the Kumyk, Dargi, and Nogai (Miklashevskaja, 1953). Their efforts remained at a small party level and could not exhaust the great variety of anthropological types characteristic of the numerous peoples living in the Caucasus. Largescale research in the Caucasus did not start before an Anthropology Department was established within the Institute of Experimental Morphology of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (later transferred to the Institute of History, Georgian Academy of Sciences). These programs were initially controlled by A. N. Natishvili, later replaced by M. G. Abdushelishvili, and covered almost every ethnic and spatial group of the North Caucasus in the Georgian and Armenian Republics (Abdushelishvili, 1964). At the same time anthropological materials were collected in Azerbaidzan, but these were published only in part (Kasimova, 1960). Scientific guidance of this expedition was offered by Debets, who also studied the anthropological types of peoples living in Daghestan with particular emphasis on the Western ethnic groups — the Avars and the Andy-didojans (Debets, 1956b). Detailed anthropological mapping of Daghestan was completed by A. G. Gadzhijev (1965). Oshanin persistently expanded the field of his activities in Soviet Central Asia, finally covering all the peoples of this region (Oshanin, 1957). The rich data he collected in the expeditions of many years provided the basis for a synthetic representation of the ethnic anthropology and ethnic genesis of Central Asian peoples which he was fortunate to complete by the close of his amazing scientific career devoted to the anthropology of Soviet Central Asia and adjacent countries abroad (Oshanin, Zezenkova, 1953; Oshanin, 1957-1959; Nadzhimov, 1958).

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Those peoples whose characteristics were not satisfactorily reflected in Oshanin's writings, the Kirghizes, for instance, were later considered by others. Thus, N. N. Miklashevskaja made a study of the Kirghizes while participating in the Joint Kirghiz Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition of the USSR and Kirghiz Academies of Science. I. M. Zolotareva, another member of this expedition, succeeded in collecting in a single season information on all the peoples of Soviet Central Asia living in the Fergana Valley except the Turkmenians, and thus created a basis for subsequent comparisons of their anthropological peculiarities drawn from fully compatible materials. Yu. G. Rychkov worked in the Western Pamirs; unfortunately, the results of somatological measurements he collected still remain unpublished. Referring to anthropological studies in Siberia, one must first and foremost recall works by Debets and M. G. Levin on the origin of peoples inhabiting East Siberia and the Soviet Far East as evidenced by anthropological facts. Containing much more than merely vast and original information, these books provide a review of the results of previous investigations and their further development and analysis viewed from the angle of an anthropological classification of Siberian peoples and the genesis of the Siberian Mongoloid types. In this respect, of a less general nature are the studies undertaken by M. G. Levin among the Yakuts, Toffalars, and Tuvinians; by Zolotareva among the Buryats, Nganassans (Zolotareva, 1962), and Dolgans (Zolotareva, 1965); by Rychkov among the Evenki; and by N. S. Rozov among the Selkups and the Turkic peoples of Western Siberia (Rozov, 1961). These studies contributed many new facts to our knowledge of the anthropological composition of Siberian peoples. Of immense importance are efforts by Bunak and G. M. Davydova in studying old-time Russian settlers of Siberia (Bunak, 1963 ;Davydova, 1963). A few words should be added about recent expansion of anthropological research programs. This trend can be partly regarded as a revival of the long-standing tradition which was characteristic of the initial stages of the development of Soviet anthropology but was somewhat neglected after World War II, for example, blood type and dermatoglyphic studies. On the other hand, this trend is also a response to great advances in anthropological techniques which have made it possible to introduce into field anthropological work determination of odontological parameters, many physiological and blood type factors discovered during the latest period, and factors of proteins, serum, and anomalous hemoglobins. With further development of such studies, anthropology consolidates its union with human population genetics.

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43

Progress in the above-mentioned fields has been so rapid that a by far greater part of collected information still remains unpublished. T. D. Gladkova and G. L. Khit' are distinguished for the preparation and publication of dermatoglyphic materials characteristic of peoples inhabiting the USSR; palm- and fingerprints were also accumulated by other scientists (Gladkova, 1966). Among isoserological studies particularly noteworthy are those of 1.1. Gokhman, Zolotareva, M. G. Levin, and Rychkov on indigenous Siberian nationalities (Levin, 1959; Gokhman, 1963; Zolotareva, 1964; Rychkov, 1965b); Kbit' on the highlanders of the Western Pamirs (Khit1,1961); and Gadzhiev on the peoples of Daghestan (Gadzhiev, 1964). The time lag between accumulation and publication of information on the structure of teeth variations among the peoples living in the USSR is particularly excessive. Till now, such publications are mostly restricted to odontological data obtained from paleoanthropological series; however, collections have been prepared for publication to present odontological results on the Kazakhs, Kets, Yakuts, Russian oldsettlers of Siberia, and Russians living in the European Center of the USSR. The above review is a vivid illustration of the broad front and rapid development of anthropological studies in the population of the USSR undertaken during the last few years; it demonstrates a much larger scope compared to the two preceding periods. Steady progress in this field is also seen in both a notable rise in the amount of publication and their wider coverage, a more thorough approach to interpretations of specifically anthropological problems, closer coordination with research programs carried on in history and ethnography, and selection of more specific problems of ethnogenesis for investigation from the anthropological angle.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE PEOPLES OF THE USSR AND THEIR PLACE IN THE RACIAL SYSTEMATICS Not a single general paper has yet been written on the anthropological composition of the entire USSR population. There is a review of the distinguished types in Debets's well-known summary of the paleoanthropology of the Soviet Union, but these types were segregated to be applied to paleoanthropological research, and this classification proceeds from primarily paleoanthropological analyses. As a rule, anthropological

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types found in the USSR are discussed in general papers dealing with the world's race structure, e.g., in the anthropology textbook edited by Bunak which appeared before World War II, in the anthropology manual by Ya. Ya. Roginskij and M. G. Levin, two editions of which appeared, in Cheboksarov's contribution to the collection entitled Origin of Man and Spatial Distribution of Mankind in Ancient Times, in Bunak's and Debets' articles on the principles underlying a classification of human races and their hierarchy, which aroused lively discussions. Thus it seems timely to sum up the major existing approaches to an anthropological classification of the peoples of the USSR and review the most interesting discussions devoted to specific problems involved in the genealogical relations between the anthropological types within given areas. Using Cheboksarov's convenient terminology, we can refer to the inhabitants of the European North-West of the USSR including the West Finnish group, Komi, Lett-Lithuanians, and some Northern Russian groups to the White Sea as Baltic Sea or East Baltic group of anthropological types. This is the Eastern group of the Northern branch of Europoid peoples. For over a decade heated discussion has been going on about the origin of these types. The great majority of scientists including Aleksejeva, Aleksejev, Aul, Vitov, Debets, Denisova, E. V. Zhirov, M. G. Levin, Mark, Roginskij, and Cheboksarov support the idea of a small Mongoloid admixture among the members of the East Baltic group. All these authors proceed in their opinion from the morphological distinctions which separate the Scandinavians from the East Baltic areas and Northern East Europeans. They also appeal to facts proving the true nature of historic correlation between specific features, to paleoanthropological data, and to the results of analyses of archaeological findings. A basically different, in fact contrary, view was first voiced by K. Kühn who denied differentiation of this set of features in his summary of European anthropology when he discussed the Lopar (Laplanders), whereas I. Schwidetsky advocates a similar view for the peoples of the East Baltic region and the Northern parts of Eastern Europe (Schwidetsky, 1959). In Soviet literature, this concept is shared by V. P. Jakimov, but his arguments more often than not rest on paleoanthropological materials and neglect the latest results of studies on the population of today (Jakimov, 1956, 1962; Debets, 1961). It was in the first decade of the 20th century that the first objective concepts of anthropological composition of the population in Eastern Europe took shape with the appearance of E. M. Chepurkovskij's writings. He distinguished two anthropological types within the Russian nation: the Eastern Great Russian type and the Valdaj type differing in

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pigment intensity and cranial index. As studies went on, further differentiation of types resulted in a considerable rise in the number of types; however, even now the problem of their grouping and taxonomic hierarchy has not been satisfactorily solved. Almost all scientists unite these variants in the East European group of anthropological types, intermediate between the Northern and Southern brances of Europoids, supposedly formed as a result of the interbreeding of the two. There can hardly be any doubt that the very formation of these intermediate variants as a group might have been at least partly due to preservation of some integral, non-differentiated entities widespread throughout Eastern Europe during previous periods. Bunak traced the origin of these types back to the most ancient settlers of the Stone Age; some other authorities try to account for the role played by subsequent migrations and treat this group as a formation of later times, though they admit the existence of analogues for some types during the Bronze Age or even Neolithic times. Bunak and Aleksejeva, the authors of the latest and most comprehensive and detailed surveys of the anthropology of the Russians, distinguish different numbers of local and regional types within the territory of the Russian habitat. Bunak distinguishes twenty local types within this area alone, whereas Aleksejeva outlines eight typological complexes throughout the whole of Eastern Europe, including Belorussia and the Ukraine. Djachenko divides the Ukrainian population into five spatial anthropological complexes of types, compared to the one suggested by Aleksejeva. Following Djachenko in his attempt to trace morphological similarity and genetic kinship between the Central Ukrainian type, distinguished by this author, and the Russian Valdaj and Eastern Great Russian types, one can diminish the number of the types; however, as stated in Aleksejeva's review of his book, these types are in fact different in many respects. If we compare all available classification patterns, we shall be able to see that they are dissimilar in the number and arrangements of separated variants, the ways of their groupings, their breaking, and their different levels of representing differentiation of races. Alongside the typological description of the anthropological peculiarities of the population of Eastern Europe, an attempt was made to prove the idea of the prevalence of local variability over typological variability within the Russian habitat (Aleksejeva, 1967). This attempt was based on craniological facts, and the idea still needs further development with the use of somatological data. Whenever the Caucasian anthropological types come to the fore, the problem arises which has been actively discussed in Soviet anthropo-

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logical literature — that of the role played by the Northern elements in the shaping of these types. As early as the late twenties, Bunak mentioned the Northern race in connection with his analysis of paleoanthropological finds obtained from burial places of the early Iron Age found in the vicinity of the Southern shore of Lake Sevan (Bunak, 1929). It is quite evident that if we admit contacts with the Northern race at the junction of the first and second millenia B.c., it would be difficult to eliminate effects caused by Northern elements in the formation of the peoples which inhabit the Caucasus today. Debets voiced sharp and well-founded objections to this theory in his review of Soviet paleoanthropology. His opinion was that some specific features of the protoEuropean type have been preserved in the body type of the Caucasian peoples. Later, Debets suggested that Caucasian nationalities are related to the peoples of Northern and Eastern Europe, not only morphologically, but also genetically (Debets, 1956b, 1960). His stand was supported by N. N. Miklashevskaja (1959, 1960). M G. Abdushelishvili, A. G. Gadzhiev, and the author of this article advocate a theory stating that the Caucasian anthropological types characteristic of the peoples inhabiting the Central Caucasus (the Caucasionic type) were unaffected by any Northern elements in the process of their formation. They draw their arguments from the morphological uniqueness of these peoples and absence of analogues within Eastern Europe, the evident boundaries between their habitats, paleoanthropological analogues within the Caucasian region itself, and facts provided by history and ethnography which prove the originality and uniqueness of the ethnic history and cultures of the Caucasian peoples. Aleksejev advocates the idea of a protomorphous set of features preserved in the Caucasus since ancient times, probably since the Stone Age, due to isolation (Aleksejev, 1963), whereas the former two authors see the anthropologically peculiar features of modern Caucasian peoples primarily as a transformation of the ancient body type characterized by the gracility and narrow faces testified to by numerous paleoanthropological finds. Most scientists agree on the number of anthropological types to be distinguished in the Caucasus: almost all classifications contain four: the Pontic type of the Western part of North Caucasus (the Abkhasian and Adygei group); the Caucasionic type of Central Caucasus (the Ossetians, Balkars, Karachevs, Georgian highland groups, Avars and AndoDidoyan peoples); the Caspian type (the population of Azerbaidzan and South Daghestan — the Azerbaidzanians and part of Lezgins); the Armenoid type of South and, partly, Eastern Georgia (the Armenians and some Georgians). As for the arrangement of these types in the various

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classifications, no unanimity has been reached as yet. Bunak believes the Pontic type to be the most ancient in the Caucasus and traces its origin to Asia Minor. According to Abdushelishvili, all Caucasian anthropological types are about the same age, but belong to different classes of anthropological types: the Caspian type to the Indo-Pamirs group, or more precisely, to the Indo-Afghan class; the Pontic type to the Mediterranean class; the Caucasionic and the Armenoid types to that of Asia Minor. I agree with him on the taxonomic position of the Caucasionic and Armenoid types, but think differently about the arrangement of local elements distinguished within the populations of North and Central Caucasus — I believe the Pontic set of features to be the outcome of a transformation undergone by the more ancient Caucasionic type which unites both, as well as similar combinations, into the Balkan-Caucasian group of anthropological types, a subdivision coequal with the Asia Minor and Mediterranean groups of the Southern branch of Europoids. The role of contacts with members of the Northern race is the central problem of Caucasian anthropology; the problem of the Mongoloid interbreeding and of the significance and dating of this admixture is of similar importance for the anthropology of the peoples of Soviet Central Asia. The two Mongoloid peoples of Central Asia, the Kazakhs and Kirghizes, were united in a single South Siberian anthropological type the origin of which was discussed by M. G. Levin in a special paper (Levin, 1954). In his opinion, now supported by nearly every specialist in the field, this is a predominantly Mongoloid type with an European interbreeding which came into being as the Mongoloids of Central Asia mixed with the Europoids of the Andronovo culture. The other peoples of Soviet Central Asia are components in the Southern branch of Europoids though there is a Mongoloid admixture in them except, perhaps, the peoples living in the Western Pamirs. Since Oshanin's and Jarkho's papers made their appearance, two local types have been distinguished within the Southern branch of Europoids: the Transcaspian Turkmen type almost identical to the Caspian type of Azerbaidzanians (for the sake of uniform terminology, we shall refer to it as the Caspian type since a noticeable Mongoloid admixture among the Turkmenians is of relatively late origin), and the Pamirs-Ferghana type (Jarkho) or the race of the Central Asian Interfluve (Oshanin) among the Uzbeks and Tadziks. The origin of the Pamirs-Ferghana type was given special, detailed consideration in Soviet anthropological literature. Debets believed the Pamirs-Ferghana type to have formed as brachicephalic features developed among the long-headed ancient settlers of the Mediterranean belt. Trofimova regards it as the outcome of interbreeding between the gracile

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type characteristic of Mediterranean population and the massive Andronovo (Trofimova, 1962). In his first papers on the origin of the Pamirs-Ferghana type, Ginzburg favored the idea of its direct genetical relation to the set of features represented among the people of the Andronov culture, but later he joined Trofimova in interpreting the origin of this type as a complex process involving brachicephalization of the Mediterranean and gracilization of the Andronov populations (Ginzburg, 1964, 1967). Quite recently a basically new approach to the origin of the PamirsFerghana type was formulated. Its typical representatives are seen in Tadzik highlanders, unaffected by any Mongoloid influences, in contrast to the Uzbeks. The type is treated in the entirety of its morphological features, including brachicephality, as an independent and fairly old formation component in the Southern branch of the Europoid race (Rychkov, 1964b). Finally, there exists a theory which regards only the Uzbeks and Tadziks of the plains as typical representatives of the PamirsFerghana race, and classifies the Pamirs peoples and probably Tadzik highlanders as members of the Caspian type (Aleksejev, in print). The anthropological type of the Volga Basin and the Urals zone are genetically closely related to those of Western Siberia. Within the Uralic group of anthropological types many scientists distinguish two local variants characteristic of the Finnish and Turkic peoples of the Volga Basin — the sub-Uralic and the sub-Laponoid types. The former differs from the "pure" members of the Uralic group in having a greater proportion of Europoid elements, i.e. being predominantly Europoid, while the latter differs by having a substantially higher cranial index, particularly characteristic of the Udmurts. Since these two types do not differ considerably in any other characteristic feature (the Udmurts possess neither a lower face nor any more expressed Mongoloid features), there is an opinion that the sub-Laponoid type is merely a local variety of the subUralic type, hence it is unreasonable to promote it to an independent taxonomic rank of a unit of race classification. As far as the origin of the Uralic group of anthropological types is concerned, all scientists except Bunak treat this group as the product of ancient interbreeding between Europoid and Mongoloid formations dating as far back as Neolithic times (Aleksejev, 1961). This theory was first proposed by M. G. Levin, Trofimova, and Cheboksarov (Trofimova, Cheboksarov, 1941; Levin, 1941). Of late the traditional genealogical tree of Siberian anthropological types which used to have three branches — the Paleo-Siberian or Baikalic type, the Central Asian type, and the Arctic type — has been somewhat

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amended. As new facts accumulated and were analyzed more thoroughly, the number of types distinguished among the Siberian Mongoloids grew, similar to what happened to the Uralic group of anthropological types where two types were singled out — Uralic type proper, and the Enisei type. M. G. Levin broke the Arctic group of anthropological types into two subgroups — the types of the Bering Sea and those of Kamchatka. The peculiar anthropological position of the Nivkhs among the peoples inhabiting the Amur Basin as regards their anthropological features, first mentioned by Debets in his book on the anthropology of the Kamchatka region, was confirmed by M. G. Levin who possessed more ample materials and accounted for their specificity by adding the AmurSakhalin type to the race classification of Siberian Mongoloids. Finally, the low-faced set of features singled out as an independent Khatanga type, which had been discovered by Debets along the Podkamennaja Tunguska River, was found by M. G. Levin in some other regions (the Eastern Tuvinians, Toffalars); thus its habitat was expanded considerably. In a paper on the anthropology of the Evenki, Rychkov tried to prove a wide spread of this Khatanga type beyond Central Siberia into Western and Eastern Siberia, and treated it as the most ancient of all Siberian types. His theory aroused strong objections (Levin, 1962). Cheboksarov arranged all the above types into a single taxonomic system. He amalgamated the Arctic group of types with Eastern and Western Mongoloids into a Pacific branch distinct from the Continental branch represented by the Baikal and Central Asian types (Cheboksarov, 1947b). The Khatanga type may also belong here. This classification has been accepted by other scientists and is at present the most widespread in Soviet literature. Its author thinks that the set of features discovered by M. G. Levin among the Nivkhs and termed by him the "Amur-Sakhalin type", has developed as a result of ancient migrations of continental and Pacific elements. Morphology provides realistic proof in support of this theory. Ample somatological information has been collected for practically every ethnic group living in the Soviet Union, though some of these data were provided by incompletely compatible programs. Generalization and synthesis of this information is on the agenda. The task can be broken into several more specific problems to be solved: the organization of all available, even unpublished, materials based on consistent and austere principles of selection; the development of connection techniques to enable comparisons of incompletely compatible data to be made, perhaps supplemented by sending out more parties to meet this need;

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and the use of photographs in illustration of descriptive features, and perhaps, collection of additional necessary materials of this nature, particularly about the peoples inhabiting the East of the Baltic Region, the Volga Basin, the Urals, Central Asia, and Siberia. Even though collection of information about blood type factors, proteins, serum, and other physiological parameters, dennatoglyphic and odontological information, has been greatly increasing due to intense efforts by the staff of the expeditions sent by the Anthropology Department of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, by the Anthropology Chair and Anthropological Museum of Moscow University and by Republican anthropological centers, this work can hardly be completed within the next few years because the territory of the USSR is so large and the peoples inhabiting it are so numerous and diverse ethnically. Only by steadily accumulating information of these parameters will it become possible to describe the anthropological types characteristic of the population of the USSR with due thoroughness and detail, to reveal actual genetic links between them, and to supply additional information relevant to all critical issues of anthropological history and origin of the Soviet nations which cannot yet be solved at our present level of knowledge.

PART II

Ethnology

The Notion of "Ethnos" and Typology of Ethnic Communities

The Term Ethnos and its Definition

Yu. BROMLEY

The usage of the Greek word έθνος in international scientific literature was for a long time largely limited to two derivative terms, namely, ETHNOGRAPHY and ETHNOLOGY1 actually denoting one and the same field of knowledge.2 To denote the object of ethnographic-ethnological study, researches usually employed either general "generic" terms, used in everyday speech, such as the Russian narod, the German das Volk, the English people, the French peuple, etc., or "specific" terms differentiated in meaning by reference to the stage of social development, such as the Russian natsija, narodnost\ and plemja. Recently, the word ETHOS together with genetically associated specific terms, including as a necessary component the adjective 'ethnic' (e.g., etnicheskaja obsjnosf, etnicheskije protsesy), has been increasingly used to denote the entire complex of such communities. The works of P. I. Kushner, written at the beginning of the 1950's (Kushner, 1951), contributed in considerable degree to the introduction of these terms into scientific literature in the Russian language, especially in ethnographic literature.3 The multi-volume series Peoples of the World First published in the collection Rosy i narody (Moscow, 1971). 1 These terms gained currency already in the 19th century. As to the origin of the term 'ethnology' see Rohan Csermark, (1967: 170-84). * Sometimes West European authors regard ethnography as a descriptive subject and ethnology as a theoretical subject; however, this distinction is of a rather conditional character. In the USSR 'ethnology' has failed to gain currency, whereas 'ethnography' has united both descriptive and theoretical studies of the peoples of the world. 3 One of the first Russian works specially devoted to 'ethnos' was written by S. Shirokogorov and published in Shanghai in 1923 (Shirokogorov, 1923). The work remained unknown to Soviet readership for a long time, and that is why it could not have contributed to the introduction of 'ethnos' in ethnographic literature in the Russian language.

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made a sizable contribution to the widespread use of 'ethnos' and 'ethnic community' (etnicheskaja obsjnosf). The preparation of this series has made imperative the use of terms which have denoted in generalized form the variety of the world's ethnic structure.4 The growing interest of Soviet ethnographers in problems of ethnogenesis and ethnic history (Dolgikh, 1960; Pershits, 1961b; Cheboksarov, 1964; Bruk, 1964; Gurvich, 1966; Kozlova, 1968), and in present-day ethnic processes (Bruk and Cheboksarov, 1961; Zhdanko, 1964; Jefimov, 1964; Gantskaja and Terentjeva, 1965; Vasiljeva, 1968) in particular, has also exercised its influence on elaborating the terminology. As a result of this a series of special articles appeared devoted to 'ethnic community' and 'ethnos' and their typology (Tokarev, 1964a; Kozlov, 1967b; Lashuk, 1967b, 1968; Gumilev, 1967; Shelepov, 1968; Khomich, 1969). In our opinion, the introduction of 'ethnos' and its derivatives in scientific usage to denote the category of human communities in question is fully justified, even if only because its conventional name is polysemantic in most European languages.6 Our philosophical literature often uses a generic term such as 'historical community', but the latter conveys a much broader sense than the category we are concerned with, and offers little possibility of distinguishing it from numerous other varieties of historically-formed social communities, such as the state, the community, the family, etc. (Kozlov, 1969: 18). At the same time the prospects of international unification of the main nomenclature of terms used in ethnographic-ethnological research favor the introduction of specialized ethnic terminology. This in turn, it is hoped, will help bring the ideas about the subject of such researches closer together. A number of new difficulties have arisen because of the introduction of specialized terms largely because the terms themselves have not been used with the same meaning. In most cases the terms ethnic community and ethnos have been used to mean 'people'. In such instances 'all kinds of ethnic communities — nations, nationalities, tribes (or groups of related tribes)' are usually meant (Bruk and Cheboksarov, 1961:76; Chislennost', 1962:29; Tokarev, 1964a:43; Kozlov, 1967b:117-18). A view is occasionally expressed that ethnos should be used to denote pre* Between 1956 and 1966 thirteen volumes (eighteen books) of this series appeared covering all the peoples of the world. * For instance, the Russian narod 'people' sometimes loses its ethnic meaning and signifies 'working masses' or simply a 'group of people'. The German das Volk is also used in the meaning not only of 'people' or 'nation', but also of 'common folk' or 'the masses'. In English the word 'people' is similarly used. To some degree this is true also of 'nation' which appeared long before the community of people now denoted by the term (Kozlov, 1969:19-20).

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class formations only. However, in everyday Russian usage narod (just like the adequate terms in the other European languages) covers class structures as well. Since narod can be replaced by ethnos the use of the latter is justified with respect to all historical periods, including the present. It should be noted that ethnic community is interpreted as a broader conception than ethnos or people (Levin and Cheboksarov, 1962:29; Cheboksarov, 1967:100). This interpretation proceeds from the idea of ethnic communities existing at different taxonomic levels and orders. Ethnoses or peoples are "assumed to be the basic units in the ethnic classification of mankind, in addition to which it is possible to single out ethnic communities that are of a taxonomically higher or lower order" (Cheboksarov, 1967:96). Ethnolinguistic communities belong to one level, ethnoses or peoples belong to another, and so-called ethnographic groups belong to still another level. One and the same community of people may be a component part of several ethnic communities of different taxonomical levels thereby forming a peculiar sort of hierarchy (Bromley, 1968b:42). It is quite obvious, however, that the amplitude of semantic divergencies in these cases is much smaller than in the case of the common usage of the word narod and its analogues in other West European languages. This fact once again points to the advisability of having a specialized ethnic terminology. In our view, however, a necessary antecedent condition to its introduction is the establishment of common characteristics that make possible the uniting in one category of all the communities that existed and continue to exist from the times of the early tribes to the nations of today. The problem is to establish the most typical intrinsic features, i.e., the essence of ethnos, people. In solving this problem it would be incorrect to ignore completely the ideas which have taken shape both with respect to ethnos and to other terms denoting various kinds of ethnic communities. The question will inevitably arise: how can one take account of all the corresponding ideas? A simple, mechanical enumeration of existing definitions would hardly be effective because such an enumeration would not produce by itself the criteria for giving preference to one or another definition. In our view, it would be far more practical and important to establish beforehand some of the common and most characteristic features of the existing ideas about ethnos and ethnic communities. Such an approach may provide points of departure in judging the specific character of the phenomenon in question. A more general point of departure would be the idea of ethnos as a community of people characterized by certain common features. In

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this case a confrontation of one community of people to other similar communities in the form of the "we-they" antithesis is meant (Porshnev, 1966:93ff). The notion itself and the common usage of the existence of a special category of human communities, such as ethnical communities (irrespective of the words used to denote them — people, ethnos, nationality, nation, etc.), largely stems from the contraposition of one community to another. The opinion has been expressed that the question of distinguishing one ethnos from another is of secondary importance in establishing the essence and specificity of ethnic communities; however, this view overlooks the fact that it is precisely this contrasting of your community with another that helps in determining active consolidating of your own ethnic distinctions, and thus in cementing the community. Unless an ethnic community is distinguished from other similar communities, it is a fiction (Porshnev, 1966:95). The unity of external distinctive features of ethnos is an indication of its internal integrity to some degree, but the fundamental feature of ethnic communities which distinguishes them from other human communities is that they all possess a characteristic of sizable typological significance — mutual confrontation.6 This is turn determines the fact that a typical property of the differentiating features of ethnos is their distinct external manifestation. These features are established on the basis of data obtained through direct observation conducted through personal contacts of people belonging to different ethnic communities. Not all communities characterized by the outwardly distinct "we-they" opposition can be regarded as ethnic communities. Cases of temporary, though obvious opposition of groups of people have nothing to do with the above (e.g., sports teams wearing different uniforms). It is not fortuitous that according to the current conception of ethnos considerable stability of the ethnos as a whole and of its basic differential features is regarded as one of its characteristic features.7 Thus, among the numerous features characteristic of different communities of people, those that directly indicate stability should be included, in the first place, among ethnic features. • Two qualitatively different types of historical typology are known to exist. One of these performs the function of generalization by abstracting itself from the space-time conditions given directly, as conditions of existence of objects of historical research, whereas the other establishes the commonness and oneness of phenomena within a definite space-time continuum (Markarjan, 1969: 110). Quite obviously, it is the second type of historical typology that has a direct bearing on case distinction and specifically the version for which the existence of definite distinctions between the objects of typology is the main criterion. 7 It is significant that ethnoses — peoples — as a rule, survive several socio-economic structures.

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This general definition does not dispense with the need to concretize the spheres in which these features manifest themselves most clearly. Although the above general criteria are implied in one degree or another in all the existing definitions of ethnos, this has not ruled out marked differences in the exact formulation of ethnic features. Thus, some of the Soviet researchers regard language and culture as fundamental features of this kind (Kushner, 1951:6); others add to these territory and ethnic self-consciousness (Cheboksarov, 1967:5); still others include in addition, the peculiarities of psychological makeup (Kozlov, 1967b:26); a fourth group, common origin and state affiliation (Tokarev, 1964a:44; Shelepov, 1968:65-73); and a fifth group sees the essence of ethnos only in specific psychological stereotypes (Gumilev, 1967). Foreign authors have given wide currency to the idea about ethnos as a group of families characterized by common origin and tradition.8 Wherein lies the source of this difference of opinion? In our view it is largely because both the essential and secondary features of ethnos are closely interconnected. Hence the difficulty in establishing the essence — the fundamental intrinsic features — and distinguishing it from the secondary features. The primary object of a scientific analysis of ethnos is to establish precisely its essential features for "all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided" (Marx, III:3 [1966], 817). To solve this kind of problem in natural science the researcher, as a rule, conducts special experiments in the course of which he places the investigated system under unusual conditions to get an insight into its essence. In the case of the social sciences the possibilities for conducting mass experiments are rather limited. Some of the social sciences, like history, are almost totally deprived of such possibilities.9 In their case experiment is replaced by the socio-historical experience of mankind. Therefore, to solve our problem we must turn to socio-historical experience with the object of establishing those of its "experiments" in which ethnic systems happened to be placed in conditions that considerably deviated from the normal conditions and caused the separation of the main features from the secondary ones. In our opinion, mankind conducted a large number of "experiments" of this kind in the course of its existence, e.g., the different forms of migration. 8

See, for instance, the word 'ethnos' in the book of Hirschberg (1965). * When nevertheless some experiments are conducted by historians they relate to the early periods in the development of mankind. Best known in this respect are those conducted by S. A. Semyonov to establish the productivity of labor of primitive people (S. Semenov, 1968).

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It is generally known that when groups of people settle in a new place, not only they, but also their descendants preserve in greater or lesser degree their original distinctive, i.e., their ethnical features.10 In our view it is the sum of these features, characterized by particular stability, that forms the essence of an ethnic community — ethnos in the narrow sense of the word. The features and elements of an ethnic community which are lost through migration should, consequently, be regarded as features of secondary importance. These represent, so to say, the outer shell for the nucleus of ethnos. A necessary preliminary condition for establishing the nucleus of ethnos is to remove the "shell". When tackling this problem account should be taken, however, of the various "splitting" effects different forms of migration may have on ethnos. In a generalized form the different kinds of migration may be reduced to two fundamental types. In some cases these are migrations of large groups of people or even of whole peoples. A typical case in point is the Great Migration of Peoples, including the invasion of nomads into the European plains, which was accompanied by the settlement of some of their groups there (such as the Proto-Bulgars or Hungarians). Usually the consequence of such migrations for ethnic communities was the loss of their traditional natural environment and much of their cultivated landscape which usually was still poorly developed. Another form of migration can be described as micromigration, i.e., migration of relatively small groups such as separate families. The form sometimes occurs within the framework of mass migration, which in this case is a gradual process extending over a long period of time.11 Today micromigration is the main form of resettlement. It should be pointed out that such migrations on one scale or another have occurred throughout the history of mankind from the time of the peopling of the ecumene.12 This is of particular interest to us because it is precisely micromigration that produces the greatest "splitting" effect on an ethnic system. In addition to the biosphere and cultivated landscape, micromigration usually removes a large part of the element of material culture and brings with it a complete change in economic ties as well as major social changes. In short, a study of ethnic systems through the prism of micromigrations shows that fundamental ethnic features are really the inherent 10

This circumstance should not be absolutized. Moreover, to ignore the fact that changing historical conditions, though gradually, inevitably transform ethnic features, may create the illusion that these features are immutable. 11 The settlement of Russians in Siberia is a case in point. 18 Although this peopling occurred in the form of group transmigrations, the groups, evidently, were often small (Bunak, 1968: 1-13; Khlopin, 1968: 99-100).

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characteristics of people. That is why an ethnic community, or a part of it, will preserve its typical features for many generations, even though it may have been torn away from its traditional sociohistorical and natural environment. It would be incorrect, however, to conclude (as is sometimes done) that ethnic features are eternal, that they do not depend on the environment. In reality it is the opposite. What is important here is that people in new conditions of existence reproduce in themselves some of their traditional ethnic features. This fact strikingly testifies to the relatively persistent character of such features in people. What kind of features are there? We have established that they must be stable and externally explicit, and that they must also play a differentiating role. It would appear as though these requirements are fully met by the external physical features of people, i.e., racial characteristics such as color of the skin, hair, and eyes, type of hair, features of the face, height, form of skull, etc. It is significant that in common usage these external, visual, stable, and differentiating features often serve as a point of departure in deciding the question of the ethnic affiliation of an individual or group of people. Soviet ethnographers have recently advanced the opinion that most peoples of the world are characterized by a relatively homogeneous racial composition (Tokarev, 1964a:44; Kozlov, 1967b:110). In contrast, Soviet physical anthropologists hold that the physical type of separate ethnical communities is not, as a rule, of a homogeneous character; accordingly, it is essential strictly to distinguish between races and ethnical communities.13 These diametrically opposed views proceed from anthropological units of different taxonomic levels. What is meant mainly in the former case are the major races and only sometimes the so-called small races, and in the latter case — the so-called anthropological type — the smallest classification unit. The layman will hardly notice the distinctions between close anthropological types. He, therefore, generally regards ethnic communities as an integral physical-anthropological unit. Despite the fact that in everyday usage it is the layman who determines the ethnic "we-they" opposition, racial distinctions in most cases are not essential ethnic features. This is not so much because there are no "pure" racially unmixed ethnoses, but because there are no clear-cut physical-anthropo13

In this case reference is made to the fact that Northern Italians are taller, more brachycephalic than Southern Italians, and that their eyes and hair are lighter; that Northern Frenchmen are taller, and their hair more fair, than that of the Southern Frenchmen (Roginskij and Levin, 1963: 321).

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logical boundaries between adjacent ethnic communities belonging to one of the major races.14 Such affiliation is rather typical of neighboring ethnic communities, for each major race has vast areas in which it prevails. The attempts to establish the ethnic origin of people on the basis of external anthropological distinctions alone, so often made in day-to-day life, are usually of an approximate nature. This also explains why cases when racial distinctions are used as the basic ethnic determinant are so exceptional. Such cases refer only to ethnoses surrounded by neighbors belonging to other big or small races.16 Such ethnoses are known as "isolates" who have been surrounded by peoples of a different racial type.16 Judging by everything, physical-anthropological characteristics are not used more frequently as one of the main ethnic features when combined, for instance, with language (Puchkov, 1968:93). Physical-anthropological characteristics play an important, though obviously auxiliary, role in distinguishing between ethnic communities that differ sharply from one, two, or more, though not all, of the adjacent communities (this occurs mainly on the boundaries of the main areas of habitation of the big races).17 In most cases when ethnic communities, though not identical at the level of anthropological types, are relatively homogeneous racially at the level of big and small races,18 physical-anthropological distinctions 14

According to Soviet anthropologists there is, as a rule, a peculiar anthropological continuity between neighboring ethnic communities within the big races. 16 It is true that such a situation may arise as a result of the migration of a part of the ethnos in question, including individual members, to a different racial surrounding. For instance, it is easy to distinguish a Russian from a Buryat beyond Lake Baikal, or an Englishman from a Kaffir in South Africa, on the basis of their racial distinctions (Debets, 1938: 117). Such distinctions, however, are hardly characteristic of the aspect we are interested in for they cannot be applied to an ethnos as a whole (to the Russians and the English in this particular case). 16 Thus, all the Negritos of South-East Asia (the Andamans, Semangs, and Aetas) have, thanks to prolonged isolation that had protected them against mixing with other peoples, developed into stable ethnic communities (Brück, Cheboksarov, and Chesnov, 1969: 93-94). Bearing in mind the present version of the race-ethnos relation, an interesting view has been advanced in the Marxist press to the effect that US Negroes are "a people within a nation" (Jackson, 1959). 17 In considering the role of physical-anthropological distinctions in ethnic differentiation we cannot ignore a rather widespread prejudice. According to this prejudice, recognition of the fact that these distinctions sometimes play a certain role in ethnic division opens the door to racialism. However, what is clearly overlooked here is that realism arises from the idea of inequality of races and not from recognition of racial distinctions which exist beyond dispute. 18 At the same time it would be incorrect to maintain that racial unity is indispensable distinction of any ethnic community, including the nation. For instance, C. A. Echanove Trujillo, a Mexican sociologist, writes that "a nation is a community of people united by common basic features, such as race, language, tradition, customs and trends"

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play a differentiating role only if one or more such community is compared with ethnic units belonging to other territorially rather remote races. In other words, the reference is to situations that are by no means typical; thus racial characteristics, though plainly apparent, cannot serve as a sufficient basis for distinguishing ethnic communities. Among the traits characterizing people, the group features of their activity are of far greater importance than their physical traits in establishing ethnic identity or ethnic division. Activity is the fundamental characteristic of people. To live man must first of all engage in practical work. In pointing out the active essence of people as doers, as subjects of the historical process, V. I. Lenin wrote: "... All history is made up of the actions of individuals, who are undoubtedly active figures." (V. I. Lenin, 1963:159). Human activity is extremely multifaceted. Although producing material values is a leading human activity, man's work is much broader in scope; for example, the arts and other aesthetic activities of society are highly specific, speech, both oral and written, represents special forms of activity, and human actions also include complex "internal" psychological processes. The sum total of non-biological activities specific of human beings make up culture in the broadest sense of the word;19 i.e., everything that is created by mankind as distinguished from the things created by nature (Frantsev, 1964:118; Sjepanskij, 1969:39; Markarjan, 1969:61ff; Zvorykin, 1967:117). Culture includes the activity of people as expressed in their actions and deeds, and not only in materialized (indirect) labor. It is necessary to distinguish between the personal culture of an individual and the culture of the community. The former functions within the framework of the latter; however, every society grants the individual a certain degree of freedom to be original, or to deviate from the generally accepted patterns. The culture of a community is not merely a sum of individual cultures of its members. "It is the sum of creative work, values and patterns of behavior accepted and recognized by the community, which have acquired meaning for its members, determining forms of behavior, regarded as Obligatory', for instance, the rules of propriety, principles of social relations within a community, etc." (Sjepanskij, 1969:45). (Echanove Trujillo, 1948: 182). This formula, if adopted even for big races, inevitably excludes from the list of nations all the ethnic communities that are not homogeneous in this respect, for example, the North Americans, Cubans, and Mexicans. 19 The term 'culture' is extremely polysemantic. It has many meanings not only in everyday usage, but also in different sciences, including philosophy which uses it in different meanings (Sjepanskij, 1969: 38). The word 'culture' is denned in a variety of ways particularly in foreign literature (Shtaerman, 1967: 1).

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The phenomenon of common culture is a vital condition for the performance of ethnic functions by culture, for if the culture of an individual is not characteristic of the entire ethnos, it cannot be regarded as a distinctive feature. A common culture is above all the "sum of living, current, and functioning works and models" (Sjepanskij, 1969:44-45), including those that have just emerged or have emerged in the relatively recent past. As we have already noted ethnic features must be characterized by stability; therefore, they should be sought first in those spheres of culture which are characterized by continuity and inheritance. These features are inherent in that part of a common culture which is passed on from one generation to another (Pimenov, 1967:3-14; Koleva, 1969:68-78; Bailer, 1969) and which are known as traditional culture. Inheritability and stability of many components of culture alone is not enough for their performing of ethnic functions, for the traditional culture may include not only ethnically distinctive elements, but also national, international, and other elements common to the whole of mankind. In short, only such cultural components may be called ethnic that not only are of universal significance to the given ethnos and are traditional, but that also are specific and distinctive of it, and explicitly evident. In most cases these features are seen in such spheres as language, material culture, folk art, folklore, customs, rites, etc. No wonder ethnic features are generally found in these spheres. It is the reproduction of such components of culture that helps the re-settlers to preserve their traditional ethnic features in the new zones. The process of reproduction itself calls for an explanation. Here we inevitably have to turn to human psychology and to social consciousness, for "everything that sets man acting must find its way through their brains" (Marx and Engels, 1970: 600). As Lenin put it, "man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it." (Lenin, 38 [1963], 212).20 Unless account is taken of some of the qualities of human psychology in the broad meaning of the word it will not be possible to establish the mechanism that makes for stable common features in the activity and behavior of members of separate ethnic collectives and ensures their being passed on from one generation to another. 20

In investigating problems of social consciousness Soviet authors usually emphasize its reflective and cognitive function which enables man to find his bearings in the environment. The organizing function of the corresponding forms of social consciousness is equally important. It is this function that helps secure the integration and cohesion of a human collective and coordinate efforts by its members (Markarjan, 1969:44, note 9), which are so important for the survival of society. Such an approach to consciousness as a factor of activity is known as a sociological approach (Kelle and Kovalzon, 1969:280).

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A peculiar but essential distinctive ethnic feature is ethnic consciousness, i.e., realization by members of a given ethnos of their affinity to it based on their opposition to other ethnoses and manifested first of all in a common ethnonym. A vital component of ethnic consciousness is the idea of a common origin. A common historical fate shared by the members of the ethnos and their ancestors throughout its existence forms the real basis of this common origin.21 That consciousness is a fundamental feature characterizing an ethnic community is evident in particular from the fact that re-settlers lose it only after a long period of time. Practically, ethnos exists as long as its members preserve the idea about their affiliation to it. Finally, an essential feature of an ethnos which in effect has until recently been left out of account by researchers is endogamy (Bromley, 1969b) in the literal sense of the word: couples mainly marry within their own community.22 That endogamy was characteristic of the basic ethnic units of primitive communal society — the tribes — has long been generally recognized. It appears, however, that the overwhelming majority of modern ethnic communities — nations — follow endogamy to a similar extent — usually more than 90 per cent of the members enter into ethnically homogeneous marriages.23 The significance of endogamy as a sort of "stabilizer" of the ethnos is connected with the special role played by the family in most societies in transmitting cultural information. Endogamy helps preserve the ethnic homogeneity of most of these units making up the ethnos, thus ensuring inheritance of traditional culture from one generation to another. At the same time marriage within an endogamous circle inevitably furthered cultural uniformity. Various factors contribute to endogamous boundaries, including natural and socio-political barriers (language, state frontiers, etc.), and separate components of social consciousness such as religion and ethnic consciousness. As scientific and technological progress makes headway, accompanied by improvements in the means of communications, natural factors recede more into the background. The boundaries of endogamy form a sort of genetic barrier for the ethnos concerned. As a result such a genetic unit as population becomes 21

But not a common origin itself. The mixed racial composition of most ethnoses contradicts this. 22 In its narrow specific interpretation endogamy is a custom which forbids marriage outside the given social group. 23 A special survey has shown that among the Australian aborigines marriages concluded with other tribes averaged 15 per cent. In big modern ethnic communities, such as the Russians and Belorussians, mixed marriages between different nationals did not account for more than 10 per cent of the total number of marriages in the area of main habitation (data of 1925).

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conjugated with ethnos.24 In drawing attention to this circumstance it should be stressed that it would be incorrect to regard population as the essence and primary basis of ethnos (Gumilev, 1967:14-15). On the contrary, an ethnos performs the functions of population only thanks to endogamy which, as we have just seen, is itself derived from many factors including social and ideological factors in the first place. Attention has long been drawn to the fact that none of the elements of ethnos such as language, customs, religion, etc., can be regarded as an indispensable differentiating ethnic feature. This is sometimes used as a reason for ignoring these elements as expressions of the essence of ethnos (Gumilev, 1967:5). Moreover in this case the fact that ethnos is not a mere sum of "features" and "common characteristics" but an integral system which is conscious of its integrity is overlooked. For instance, if language and ethnos, language and ethnic division, were always to coincide, distinguishing between the terms would apparently have been pointless. At the same time it should be stressed that ethnoses are dynamic systems which have taken shape in the course of history. No ethnos is either eternal or immutable, but this does not contradict the fact that stability is a characteristic feature of ethnos, as we have noted more than once. What is meant here is a relative stability, changes occurring in ethnic phenomena at a rate which is slower than that in other components of social life. If we compare these with the biological changes taking place in populations conjugated with ethnoses, we will see that ethnic processes occur at a much higher rate. Thus, ethnos in the narrow sense of the word and in the most general form may be defined as a historically formed community of people characterized by common, relatively stable cultural features, certain distinctive psychological traits, and the consciousness of their unity as distinguished from other similar communities. In Russian the term nationalnost 'nationality', as applied to class society, is somewhat similar in meaning to ethnos when used to denote a people as distinguished from other peoples.25 In this case the meaning 24

An example of the fact that the endogamous and genetic barriers are sometimes only conjugated, but not necessarily coincide, is that of the US Negroes. They are characterized by a high degree of endogamy (Negro-white marriages are an exception), though they are not rigidly isolated in the genetic sense (there is a high percentage of metis). 25 The term nationalnost' in the modern Russian language is used also to denote that one person or another belongs to a definite people (nation); besides, the adjective formed from it is used in the sense as 'state' since it was borrowed from the West European languages through direct translation: for instance, 'national income', 'national armed forces', etc.

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implied in nationalnost' is much narrower than that of natsija 'nation'. Such terminological distinction26 helps differentiate between close, though not identical, phenomena. Similarly, it is advisable to reflect in terminology also the distinction between the narrow and broad meaning of ethnos. The former will be expressed by the word ETHNIKOS (εθνικός) which is a derivative from the Greek έθνος. We should not forget, however, that "ethnikos" is by no means an isolated phenomenon. It is closely connected with its environment, made up both of social and natural factors which manifest themselves as necessary conditions governing the origin and existence of "ethnikos". The role played by these factors in the origin of ethnos in general, and "ethnikos" in particular, is a complicated problem of a special type. It has several independent aspects of which the most important are the geographical, economic, and state-political aspects. Each of these may be the object of special research. We shall, therefore, in this connection confine ourselves to warning against a rather typical mistake that occurs under such circumstances: the confusing of the conditions of origin of ethnic systems with their cardinal components. The point is that factors that have played an important part in giving rise to phenomena afterward usually retain their significance only as auxiliary forms (Gulyga, 1965:7). At the same time it is necessary to take account of the fact that ethnos in the narrow sense of the word, i.e., "ethnikos", is not connected with its environment unilaterally but interacts with it. Owing to their close interconnection "ethnikos" and environment constitute a complex formation of a peculiar kind. In addition to "ethnikos", two main spheres manifest themselves distinctly. The first could conditionally be called the "internal" sphere. It consists of all the "non-ethnic" social phenomena that are conjugated with ethnikos. The natural environment may in turn be regarded as an "external" sphere. "Ethnikos" is in effect a social phenomenon. As such it is particularly closely connected with its "internal" sphere with which it mutually penetrates one another, and by which in the final count, it is conditioned. Generally speaking, it should not be forgotten that although both in the layman's mind and in some theoretical propositions ethnic characteristics proper may be divorced from other social phenomena, in objective reality the ethnos cannot exist outside social institutions of all levels, from the family to the state. 26

It should be pointed out that in the stadial plane nationalnost' has a broader range of meanings covering not only capitalist and socialist nations, but also peoples of pre-capitalist class formations.

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The way in which ethnic features proper are combined with the social (in the narrow sense of the word) depends to a certain degree on the space parameters of "ethnikos". What is meant is the homogeneous of heterogeneous (dispersed) distribution of the bearers of ethnic qualities within a given territory? In the USSR almost all the nationalities within their own republics are modern homogeneous ethnic formations. The people who do not belong to the indigenous population of the given republic and do not form compact groups there can be regarded as heterogeneous formations. No phenomenon, however, exists in pure form. Every modern homogeneous ethnic formation has alien ethnic inclusions which may be big or small. More than that, there exist socalled homogeneous-heterogeneous ethnic formations. They occur when one territorial unit is inhabited simultaneously by members of different ethnoses. In small territorial units, such as rural communities this is a rather frequent occurrence, but even within the boundaries of large political and territorial subdivisions one may encounter areas of intermixed settlements of two or even more large ethnoses (as, for instance, the settlements of the Russian and Kazakhs in Soviet Kazakhstan). As to the connection between "ethnikos" and social institutions, a major role in its molding and reproduction is played by social formations that constitute the main units in the historical development of mankind. To denote these formations Soviet authors have recently proposed the term SOCIAL ORGANISM (Yu. Semenov, 1966b). Owing to the extremely broad meaning of "social", this term has become indefinite and polysemantic. Experts have pointed out that this is also true of the use of "society" for the purpose (Porshnev, 1969:305). The proposal to use in this connection "country", a camouflaged synonym of state (Porshnev, 1969:306-08), is also an open question. It is still not clear why it is necessary to camouflage the social term "state" by the geographical word "country". It is true, "state" has more than one meaning. In Marxist literature it means first of all the apparatus of class domination, but at the same time it is a political and territorial unit. With the origin of classes it is precisely these units that have become the main social cell in the world-wide historical process. Since the reproduction of the internal social structure of these cells occurs, as a rule, in conditions of relative independence, they naturally may be regarded as independent organisms. This, in turn, enables us to denote the basic macro-unit in the socio-special division of mankind as a "social organism". For class society it would be more exact to call this unit a "political organism", but such a term is not applicable to primitive communal society for there was no state as a special organ of power divorced from the people. The basic independent unit of

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social development then was such a "non-political" formation as the tribe. The special formations that originated as a result of the intersection of "ethnikos" and the social organism enjoyed relative independence which made possible reproduction. Such "synthetic" formations, which have been an important and widespread form of existence of "ethnikos", can, in our view, be defined as ETHNOSOCIAL ORGANISMS (or "ESO's"). In addition to ethnic oneness, such organisms are usually characterized by common economic, social, territorial, and political factors (the maximum version, so to speak). The socioeconomic factor is the most essential component of the "ESO". Socioeconomic factors which form the basis of all social phenomena, including ethnic phenomena, are more mobile than the latter. It is precisely this relative conservatism and certain independence of ethnic qualities that conditions the possibility to preserve basically the same "ethnikos" over a period of several socioeconomic structures. For instance, the Ukrainian "ethnikos" existed under feudalism as well as under capitalism and socialism (that is why we refer to the Ukrainians in application to the feudal, capitalist, and socialist epochs). The affiliation of the social components in an "ESO" to a certain socioeconomic structure usually exerts a definite influence on the structure of its ethnic qualities, especially on its homogeneity. Thus, the "ESO" of primitive communal society, the tribe, was socially homogeneous and simultaneously distinguished for its ethnic uniformity. Though class division in the "ethnosocial organisms" of antagonistic structures does not completely destroy their ethnic integrity, it is accompanied by the emergence of group (class, estate and caste) ethnic specificity in them. Soviet experience has shown that the abolition of antagonistic classes in socialist society has sharply intensified the process of the so-called ethnic consolidation, i.e., the "ESO" is rapidly becoming more homogeneous ethnically. In studying the typology of "ethnosocial organisms" in the historicostadial plane it is necessary to mention the occurrence of transitional states. These may be conditioned by processes taking place both in the socioeconomic and ethnic spheres. In the former, we are confronted with transitional periods in social development. For instance, in the USSR in the transitional period between the Great October Socialist Revolution and the building of the foundations of socialism, the former bourgeois nations were gradually transformed into socialist nations. In speaking about the developing countries today (or "developing nations" as they are sometimes called), we could say that these "ESO's" are also in a transitional state.

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As to transitional states of "ethnosocial organisms" arising from a change in their ethnic qualities, most illustrative are those cases when these changes end with a complete change in ethnic consciousness. Two cases in point are those of the French Canadians and Anglo-Australians who as "ESO's" were only recently in a transitional state of this kind. In the case of the Anglo-Australians, alien inclusions (German, Italian and other immigrants) played no small role in the qualitative change. The intersection and the mutual penetration of "ethnikos" and the social organism have a spacial aspect, in addition to a historico-stadial aspect. In conditions of class society it is often observed that "ethnikos" and the social organism, as represented by a state formation, fail to coincide in territory. Depending on the character of this relationship it is possible conditionally to note three types of "ethnosocial organisms". Type One ("ESO"-I). When outside the main common territory, the given "ethnikos" exists in heterogeneous form or in the form of small homogeneous groups that are not characterized by socioeconomic independence. Among the ethnic communities known today, the Italian nation belongs to Type One, since outside Italy the Italian ethnos exists in a dispersed state. The Slovaks are another example. The overwhelming majority of the Slovaks form the Slovak nation inside the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (or the Slovak ethnosocial organism — the Slovak Socialist Republic). Only a small minority of the Slovaks live outside their country, either in a heterogeneous state, or in the form of small homogeneous groups (for instance, the Slovak settlements in the USSR, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Rumania). Type Two ("ESO"-II). The relation of the cardinal components is such that political formations mold several "ethnosocial organisms" out of one "ethnikos". A striking example is the Arab "ethnikos". The modern states have molded several "ethnosocial organisms" out of it: the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, etc. Each of these is characterized by dialectal and cultural distinctions. In a certain sense the Spanish American "ethnikos" presents a similar picture, the only difference is that within separate political units it is not quite homogeneous. A graphic example of dismemberment of a single "ethnikos" into two separate "ethnosocial organisms" is the case of the two German states today — the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. In this case we observe within one "ethnikos" at the same time two different historical types of "ethnosocial organisms" which belong to different socioeconomic structures. Type Three ("ESO"-III). Within the framework of one political community (state) there are several homogeneous "ethnikos" with relative independence. The "ethnosocial organisms" which are thus formed

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should, perhaps, be regarded as bodies with structures that are not quite complete since they are deprived of their own statehood. A classical case of this variety are some of the nations within the framework of prerevolutionary Russia: the Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Georgian, and a few other nations that acquired their own statehood only after the Great October Socialist Revolution. A study of the different varieties of "ethnosocial organisms" in the historico-stadial and spacial (territorial) planes convincingly reveals a diversity of forms in the existence of "ethnikos". This diversity is by no means exhausted by the above types and varieties of "ESO's". The ethnic picture of the world is considerably complicated by the hierarchical character of ethnic phenomena. This in particular has a direct bearing also on the structure of "ethnosocial organisms". In the ethnic hierarchy there are formations which not only rise above "ethnikos" and "ethnosocial organisms" (the so-called ethnolinguistic communities, for instance), but also enter them as ethnographic groups. Thus, the Russian nation, which together with the Ukrainian and Belorussian nations forms the East Slav ethnolinguistic community, only a short while ago had as component parts distinct ethnographic groups (the Pomors of the White Sea coast, the Kerzhaks, and the Don, Orenburg, Amur, and Ussuri Cossacks). It is also necessary to take account of a vast number of small ethnic formations ("splinters" of "ethnikoses") both of a homogeneous and a heterogeneous character. They exist as inclusions (chiefly in the form of national minorities) in separate "ethnosocial organisms". As such they are distinguished one from the other by their basic structural components. It would be incorrect to ignore this circumstance in a detailed typological study of ethnic communities. Finally, it should be borne in mind that "ethnikos" forms certain systems not only with a social but also a natural environment. These systems are known as ETHNOSPHERES. In a word, "ethnikos" is characterized by "polyvalence". This conditions the abundance of forms of its existence and correspondingly, the number of types and varieties of ethnic communities. To denote this diverse typology a rather limited number of terms are used. Often different researchers use the same term to denote typologically different ethnic phenomena. This, in particular, explains discrepancies between individual Soviet researchers in the field of social sciences, as was clearly shown by the discussions devoted to description of ethnic communities as a whole and to their separate types.27 27

Particularly illustrative in this respect was the discussion on the term 'nation' held in 1966-1968 in the journal Voprosy istorii.

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Misunderstandings frequently arise when one researcher uses ethnos in the narrow sense, i.e., in the sense of "ethnikos", and another, in the broad sense, i.e., in the sense of an "ethnosocial organism". The former will quite rightly say that community of economic ties is not characteristic of ethnos, whereas the latter, who regards ethnos as an "ethnosocial organism", will for good reasons of his own claim the opposite. It therefore follows that it is urgently necessary to distinguish more clearly semantically between the terms that have been already formed. Maybe it will be better to use ethnos both in the narrow and in the broad sense, only to denote main ethnic formations (within the continuum tribe — nation); whereas ethnic community may be used to denote all stages of ethnic hierarchy. It will, nonetheless, not be possible wholly to overcome the somewhat polysemantic character of these terms which are of a broad general nature. Undoubtedly new terms are needed and should be introduced gradually. I have proposed to introduce only two new terms. One of these is "ethnikos" which has been used to denote ethnos in the narrow sense of the word, i.e., an ethnic phenomenon proper. The other term is "ethnosocial organism" ("ESO") which in general form reflects the main type of symbiosis of ethnic and macrosocial formations.

On the Concept of Ethnic Community

V. KOZLOV

The importance of the national question in the contemporary scene, the broadening of research into national, or in a wider sense ethnic, relations in various countries, and the features of the development of different peoples call for more thorough elaboration of the methodological basis of this research. An essential part of the work is to define more precisely the scientific concepts employed. The discussion that developed around the concept NATION in Voprosy istorii in 1966, fruitful as it was, could not result in a complete definition of the concept of nation. Though most important methodologically speaking, nation does not embrace all peoples or all forms of ETHNIC COMMUNITY.1 The attempts at that discussion to differentiate the definition of nation by abstracting it from the concept of other communities of people was methodologically imperfect. Correct definition of a concept involves establishing, first, a generic criterion, i.e., an indication of the nearest, higher concept, and second, a narrower distinction — criteria appertaining only to the concept itself and differentiating it from other concepts of the same genus. "What does it mean to give a definition?" wrote Lenin. "It means first of all to describe a concept in terms of another, wider one" (Lenin, 1960:133). That means, as regards the concept of nation, first to establish the concept of ethnic First published in Sovetskaja etnografija, N2 (1967). 1 In place of the term ethnic community adopted by us, historical community is used as a rule in philosophical literature (Arkhangel'skij, 1961; Aleksejev, 1962; etc.). Historicism, however, is by no means a feature confined solely to tribes, nationalities, and nations. Many other forms of human community, from the family to the state, arise at definite stages of the historical development of society under the influence of various historical causes, and consequently can also be called "historical forms of human community".

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community, and second to establish the difference between a nation and such related communities as, for example, nationalities (narodnosf) and tribes. Dzhunusov (1966) came closest to this of all the contributors to the discussion, but in our view was unable to resolve the task satisfactorily. The establishment of the concept ethnic community is related to a number of most important problems of ethnography (of which it is the basic subject of investigation), but also presents considerable interest for related disciplines, viz., history, archaeology, sociology, linguistics, etc. For a long time it has not been given sufficient attention. The definitions of people or ethnic community that sometimes occurred in publications have been usually given as rather truncated, or on the contrary rather extended, versions of the well-known definition of a nation as an historical community of people developed on the basis of community of language, territory, economic life, and psychic traits expressed in a community of culture. Thus Levin and Cheboksarov defined a people as an historically formed group of human beings linked by community of language, culture, and the territory where it had taken shape (Levin and Cheboksarov, 1957:10). Djunusov characterized the ethnic community as a community of language, ethnic territory, economic ties, ethnic consciousness, and definite features of culture and character (Dzhunusov, 1966:22), without analyzing any one of these elements. The sole attempt for many years to define the concept of ethnic community is that made by Tokarev in the first paragraph of his article "The Problem of Types of Ethnic Community" (Tokarev, 1964a). Tokarev's reasoning, it seems to us, is not free from errors of method. Thus, at the beginning of his article, he replaces the problem of the existence and specific character of an ethnic community by the secondary question of what distinguishes one people from another. After citing a number of such distinctions as "language, territory, common origin, economic ties, political unity, cultural features, religion, etc.", he calls them "features characterizing an ethnic community" and remarks that none of these features or attributes is indispensable. Then, substituting social links for "characteristic features", and contradicting his earlier statement about these features not being indispensable, Tokarev formulates the following definition: "An ethnic community is a community of people based on one [our italics — V. K.] or more of the following types of social link: community of origin, language, territory, state affiliation, economic links, tenor of cultural life, religion (where it is preserved)." He calls this definition "purely formal" and "very provisional", but a few pages later he writes that he is still unable to answer the question of "what it is that

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distinguishes an ethnic community from any other form of human community". That reservation, however, does not alter the essence of the matter; at the end of his article Tokarev repeats his "purely formal" definition in a somewhat abbreviated form as a final conclusion. We shall have occasion further on to allude to several of his propositions in more detail, the more so since they have not been subjected to critical analysis in spite of their methodological importance. Elaboration of the problem of defining the concept of ethnic community, which is closely linked with that of establishing such principal types of this community as have evolved historically and exist at the present time, is a difficult task. Ethnic communities, especially in highly developed class societies, are complex, with a mass of individual peculiarities that put an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of generalizing even narrow concepts like nation, for example. When we try to unite modern nations typologically with prehistoric tribes, generalization is even more difficult. In addition, human beings form a host of communities besides ethnic ones, which exist closely interwoven with one another. One group of people may simultaneously belong to a production organization, a social class, a political party, a religious body, a racial group, a people, and a state. The group is linked in a certain way with each of these communities, and in one set of conditions it will act as an inseparable part of one community and in other conditions as an indissoluble part of another community. To detach from this web ethnic interrelations and the characteristics appertaining only to an ethnic community is not easy. Among the circumstances complicating this task, terminological difficulties are of no little importance not only to the special, narrow concepts like tribe or nation, but also to the general, wider "generic" concept. Because it seemed terminologically less vulnerable, we have given preference in this article to the concept of ethnic community, not identifying it in essence with the concept of people (narod).2 Some scholars admit 2

The word narod 'people' has several meanings in Russian (as in many other languages, for example, German Volk and French peuple). Occasionally, the ethnic sense is lessened and means 'the laboring masses' or simply 'a group of persons'. Its terminological relationship with such narrow concepts of the ethnic community as, for example, nation, has not been fully established. In our Soviet Press the use of narod most commonly met is as an equivalent for nation (russkii narod— 'Russian people or nation'; itaryanskii narod — 'Italian people or nation', etc.). We also say and write sovetskii narod 'Soviet people', indiiskii narod 'Indian people', etc., the word covering a number of different ethnic communities. Not so long ago the expression "people constituting a component part of a nation" appeared in our Press and has since had a certain currency in ethnographic literature, where narod 'People' was used without adequate grounds for part of the nation (Jackson, 1959).

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the possibility of employing ethnic community in a broader sense. Thus Levin and Cheboksarov, who were among the first to employ it in Soviet ethnographic literature, considered it a wider concept than narod because it could be used also for "a group of peoples related by language and culture", for example, all the Slav peoples, as well as for "a part of a people having certain specific linguistic and cultural features", for example, regional groups of Russians (the Pomors of the White Sea coast; the Don Cossacks, etc.) (Levin, Cheboksarov, 1957:11; Cheboksarov, 1964). In practice, however, ethnic community is almost never thus used since it could lead to undesirable confusion of concepts. In order to designate linguistically related groups of peoples it is customary to employ ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUP, and for designating a part of a people, ETHNOGRAPHIC GROUP, RELIGIOUS GROUP, DIALECT GROUP, etc. The poor development of our sociology, in particular the absence of a developed classification of various social forms that could help us define the place of the ethnic community among other social categories and its links with them, also complicates this problem. The term SOCIAL GROUP, employed by our sociologists which could also, it might seem, be applied to ethnic communities, is as a rule employed by them only for the class division of society.3 Recently Semenov proposed the methodologically important category of SOCIAL ORGANISM, but unfortunately so limited his definition of the concept (as "a separate, individual society, as an independent unit of social development" [Semenov, 1966b:94]) that it is quite difficult to employ it for purposes of classification. Therefore, in order to define the concept of ethnic community we are driven, of necessity, briefly to examine certain general sociological questions. We would begin by saying that the term SOCIAL should, in our view, The term natsional "nost" in Russian is close in ethnic significance to the concept narod; Soviet natsional "nosier 'Council of Nationalities* means the same as Soviet narodov, but natsional "nost" has a narrower scope than narod and is almost never employed with the significance of 'tribe'. In Soviet literature at present natsional "nost" is used most often with the meaning of ethnic (national) affiliation. In other countries (English 'nationality', French nationalste), the term is usually used in the political sense to signify membership of a certain state, i.e., citizenship; to express a concept close to the Russian, their literature sometimes uses 'ethnic nationality'. 8 Thus G. V. Osipov, speaking of the principles of Marxist sociology, remarks: "A social group is a group of people united by a community of definite aims and interests and common efforts to achieve them; it is an element of the social structure of a definite socioeconomic formation. The variables which determine the affiliation of individuals with one group or another are primarily the function of the individuals in an historically determined system of social production, that is to say, their relation to the means of production, their role in the social organization of labor, and consequently the mode of obtaining and the scale of the share of social wealth that is available to them." (Osipov, 1964: 215).

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be applied to the diverse combinations and groupings of people that are based on actually existing links. The individuals belonging to them are conscious of their social membership, distinguish their group from others of the same kind by certain characteristics, and are capable in certain circumstances of acting as a single social whole. This qualification guards us against considering all the groupings of people encountered in scientific literature that are differentiated by researchers for one purpose or another (for example, the dolichocephalics and brachycephalics of anthropology; the cholerics and sanguines of psychology). As to social formations proper, it is useful to differentiate them, first, into two groups according to origin: those consolidated in the course of mankind's historical development, irrespective of the will and consciousness of separate individuals, and those created at a definite time according to the wishes of the people joining them. There is no need here to demonstrate that the first group embraces ethnic communities, and that trade unions, for example, belong to the second category. For the next stage of classification it is pertinent to employ Semenov's category of social organism, with certain qualifications. In our view the term should only be used for social formations that can exist and evolve independently of others. This condition is linked above all with a definite minimum size of the social formation and is manifested in three principal processes: first, the production of the material values needed for the existence of the people constituting the social organism; second, the biological reproduction of the organism through the birth of a new generation; and third, the social reproduction through the passing on of certain social and cultural values and traditions to the new generation. The concept of independent development helps to distinguish the initial form of ethnic community, the tribe, more clearly from other social formations of the same epoch. In our Soviet scientific literature, statements were found not so long ago, and still are found in popular philosophical writings, that originally there were only gens or clans (and even special clan languages), and that only after a long lapse of time with the development of the productive forces were clans succeeded by tribes (Arkhangel'skij, 1961:6). These statements are insufficiently substantiated. The clan as such from the beginning of its evolution could only exist in organic unity with other clans because its most important feature was exogamy, the banning of marriage relations within the clan. The establishment of marriage relations usually occurred, apparently, between clans stemming from one horde and speaking one language; marriage was inevitably combined with certain economic links and other types of relations. Wherever, "therefore", Engels wrote, "we discover the gens as

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the social unit of a people, we may also look for an organization of the tribe" (Engels, 1940b). The problem of the functions of clans is beyond the scope of this article, but it seems to us that the clan, based on blood relationships and forming part of the tribe, part of the social organism, must be classed not so much as an ethnic group as a marriage-family group. The widely held view that the tribe is also based on blood relationships cannot be accepted as quite correct, since such connections mainly determine the structure of the tribe only, and all the mutual relations between clans. Some ethnographers, including Cheboksarov, consider the most typical forms of ethnic community in the primitive communal society to be not the tribe but a group of related tribes (Cheboksarov, 1964:6-7). Groups of tribes speaking related languages, or even dialects of a single language, were quite often encountered, but the co-existence of such tribes as an association of separate social organisms did not by any means always lead to their actual amalgamation. The life of an individual, or of a whole clan, in the tribal period was inseparably linked precisely with the existence of the tribe and did not depend directly on the existence or nonexistence of a group of tribes. The problem of the ethnic correlation between the tribe and union of tribes deserves special consideration. It may be considered established that the amalgamation of kindred tribes into a group, and the development in their members of a feeling of belonging to that group as to a social whole, is more or less characteristic only of the final phase of primitive society, that is, of the period when it was already beginning to break up. As for the union of tribes (for example, the League of the Iroquois), it frequently originated not in the organic needs of the socioeconomic development of the various tribes, but in external causes, generally in joint war clashes with other tribes. A number of other formations besides the ethnic community may be classed as social organisms, in particular the state (Semenov, 1966b:9293). In order to clarify the specific features of the ethnic community, we must consider its basic characteristics and features. The set of criteria usually employed by investigators trying to define the concept of ethnic community is quite large. It includes, as already said, the four "mandatory" elements of the definition of a nation — viz., community of language, territory, economic life, and psychical traits expressed in a common culture — but also a number of other essential elements such as ethnic self-consciousness, common origin or descent, religion, etc. Some of these elements, as will be shown later, cannot be considered basic criteria of an ethnic community because they either

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allow too many exceptions or are, in general, mainly characteristic of some other kind of community. In analyzing all these elements we should take into consideration that a factor conditioning the origin of a social phenomenon does not necessarily become a major characteristic feature of this phenomenon. Some of these elements, moreover, including language and territory, may underlie a definite form of social relationship; it is then methodologically vital to consider the relation of the ethnic community to corresponding types of community (linguistic, territorial, economic, etc.), each of which may evolve according to its own laws, so that its relation to the ethnic community may change in the course of historical development. Language, the most important means of intercourse between people, is a precondition for the rise of many kinds of social organisms, including the ethnic community, for which it has special significance. Community of language is not, as such, inherent in either a state or, for example, in a religious community. Even in multinational states where there is usually some common language, that language ensures communication between people mainly in the economic and political fields and does not touch their spiritual life. For people who belong to a particular ethnic community, the mother tongue is not only a means of communication but also a means of developing the most important forms of their culture. Only the mother tongue, received and developed in early childhood, is capable of expressing the finest shades of the inner life of people, and enables them to understand each other by catching one another's meaning literally with half-a-word. Groups of people who change their language also change their ethnic affiliation in the course of time, usually in the second or third generation. As for the incomplete coincidence of ethnic and linguistic communities, examples are most commonly adduced of several peoples speaking the same language. Spanish, for example, is spoken not only by Spaniards but also by Latin American peoples who owe their origin to the mixing of Spanish settlers with Indians and other ethnic components. These cases, however, do not detract from the efficacy of the criterion of community of language, since one understands by it a community of language within the people and not outside it; it is of no significance for the ethnic unity of Spaniards that Chileans or Nicaraguans also speak Spanish. A more basic case is that when sections of a people (narod) speak strongly differentiated dialects. This applies, for example, to the Germans, and especially to the Chinese, whose Northern, Eastern, and Southern groups do not understand one another. Sometimes sections of a people (narod) speak different languages. Among these exceptional cases are the Irish,

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for example, some of whom speak English and others a Celtic language. Despite Tokarev's opinion, these cases, too, do not disprove the importance of the criterion of community of language, but only require greater precision in its formulation. Many modern nations, especially in the Americas, have been formed from linguistically diverse groups of population, so that community of language, unlike community of territory, must be considered not only a pre-condition or basis for the formation of a people but also as a result of this process in the course of which language or dialect differences are levelled out through the effect of the educational system and the accepted norms of speech. Where this process has still not developed to its full, ethnic consolidation cannot be considered complete. An expression of linguistic community in such cases is the existence of a single written literary language and numerous groups of the population with transitional dialects. The Irish first took shape as a people having a Celtic language, Gaelic, in common; the later transition of the overwhelming majority to English, of course, disrupted their linguistic-cultural community, but for various reasons did not obliterate their ethnic unity. At present the linguistic community of the Irish is being restored by the spread of English among those who do not yet know it, and also through the revival of Gaelic and its spread among English-speaking Irish people. Territory is primarily the pre-condition, the material base, for the formation of ethnic and of many other types of community since people must, as a rule, in order to associate, live close to one another. Territorial (i.e., neighborly) links, as such, have a rather narrow scope and usually do not go beyond the bounds of a settlement, the so-called village, neighborhood community, or a small district. Territory is basic, nonetheless, for the development of economic, linguistic, etc., links. Even groups of people differing in language and origin who live in the same territory can merge into a single nation in the course of time (such is the origin of many nations on the American continent, for example); on the contrary, the territorial dispersal of a formerly single people can lead to the formation of different ethnic communities among their parts. Being located on one territory over the course of many centuries, "settling" that territory, a people begins to consider it as their native land and to link their historical fate with it. The natural conditions of this territory find reflection in the accumulation of elements of culture and daily life, and the image of the "native land" plays a conspicuous role in the formation of ethnic self-consciousness. Territory, furthermore, is not only an important condition for the rise of an ethnic community but also for its continued existence. Breach of

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the integrity of an ethnic territory, or territorial dispersion of the members of an ethnic community, and transformation of its separate groups into national minorities settled in the midst of other peoples, sooner or later ends in their assimilation, which implies that it is desirable to include territory among the features characterizing the ethnic community. At the same time, it should be noted that territory does not itself, like language and culture, for example, have any ethnic connotations. The link with a territory, the country of habitation, is characteristic primarily of the concepts "compatrist" and "fatherland" (behind which, too, there are definite communities of people), but not of the concept people (narod). It may be good to cite a few examples of how quite different ethnic communities have taken shape at various times on one territory, or how certain peoples (Magyars, Kalmyks, etc.), having taken shape originally on one territory, migrated and lived in a quite different region. The ethnic territory itself can be altered significantly; in some cases (Russians, Yakuts, etc.), it has been greatly extended through the settlement of new regions; in others (Mordvinians, Baskhirs, etc.), it has been reduced through the settlement of other national groups on it. The development of humanity has gone hand in hand with the territorial mingling of peoples through migrations from rural to urban places, from one district of a country to another, from one country to another. In many parts of the world different peoples are intermingled and live in patches over a single area. Only those nations have an unbroken and clearly demarcated ethnic territory whose ethnic boundaries coincide with their state boundaries. When one attempts to clarify the links between the members of an ethnic community, special attention is usually given to economic connections. This attention is only partially justified since economy, although a necessary condition in the final analysis for the existence of all kinds of communities, does not characterize the specific features of the ethnic community. Economic links only fully determine an economic community, i.e., those brought about by the division of labor in the course of producing the necessities of life. The ethnic and the economic community quite often coincide, but as a rule the link between them has an indirect character, primarily because of the community of territory and the sociopolitical organization connected with it. Community of territory is a necessary pre-condition for the rise of an economic community, and when the former is disrupted through territorial mingling of peoples so is the latter. Without dwelling on the problem of the hypothetical economic community of a nationality (narodnosC), we would note that the classic economic community, consolidated with the development of

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capitalism, is not the characteristic so much of the nation as of the state, since its main determining factors (division of labor between different districts and the establishment of transport links, etc., between them, a single monetary system, customs frontier, etc.) are directly linked with the state. A common economy coincides with the national community when the nation has its own state, and as a rule does not coincide with it, or does so only partially, in multinational states where several nations are linked in one economic system (Kozlov, 1967a). We, therefore, conclude that a common economy should not be included among the main criteria of the ethnic community. The efforts of certain investigators to include common psychological traits or a culture held in common among the basic ethnic criteria seem to us to have little justification (Kaltakhchian, 1966). The psychological traits or the character of a people are determined, as is known, both by biological and social factors. The biological factors, primarily sex, age, and temperament, have no organic link with the ethnic community. Temperament is linked with climatic environment and with racial features rather than with ethnos. The fact that one temperament or another may predominate in a certain people does not contradict this general pattern. Among the social factors exerting a certain influence upon character is the ethnic environment; however, it is the class and occupational role of individuals that plays the leading part and this does not permit, especially in an antagonistic class society, the formation of a genuine community of psychological traits. Study based upon principles of social psychology clearly shows that the Russian peasant, merchant, civil servant, and worker had more differences of psychological traits than they had in common. Even to take only the Russian peasant, the Russian Pomor will be shown to be much closer in character to the Karelian than to the Russian peasant from Ryazan, and is still further from the Terek Cossack. When one speaks of the differences in psychological traits of definite peoples, for example the Norwegians and the Japanese, one has in mind a certain psychological stereotype of the one and the other abstracted from the differences within these peoples. Therefore, without glossing over the complexity of the problem, it would be much more correct to speak not of the existence of a community of psychological traits in a people, or of something called "national character", applicable, it would seem, only to peoples of pre-class societies, but rather of the existence of certain specific features of the psychological traits characterizing individual peoples, especially comparatively small ethnic communities, and the groups (class and occupational, regional, etc.) that make up each of those peoples.

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The problem of community of culture is more complex because of the vastness and certain vagueness of the concept culture. If we narrow down this concept and turn, for example, to material culture, we are then faced with numerous cases of strong differentiation of its elements within any one people (especially within a numerous people who live under widely varying conditions), and, on the contrary, with strong resemblances of cultural elements between different peoples. Furthermore, material culture, being closely linked with the means of production, exhibits a tendency to the levelling of differences existing at any one time: there has never been a nation, it would seem, whose members have possessed only the "national" tools and implements appertaining to them, and dressed in the "national" costume, and ate only special "national" dishes. As for spiritual culture, there is no universal observed in all peoples. Capitalists and the proletariat have different spiritual cultures. Lenin more than once spoke of the existence of two cultures within the culture of each nation in the capitalist epoch and stressed that any attempt to demonstrate the community of its culture inevitably led to nationalism. Thus, in defining an ethnic community, one must lay stress not on "community of culture", which was inherent only in early forms of ethnic community, but on those specific elements of peoples' culture and way of life that, combined with their language, create a unique image of the main ethnographic groups of this community. All social organisms have a definite self-awareness in the people constituting them; otherwise, they would cease to act as single social collectives and as subjects of historical development. The conditions of the material life of people can lead to one social phenomenon or another only through the consciousness of people being reflected in it in the form of definite conceptions or ideals. For man as a social being molded solely in organic connection with the formation of human society, consciousness of his membership of a wider circle of persons is not only a natural feeling but an inevitable one, giving him confidence in life, justifying his very existence on earth. This also fully applies to ethnic communities which arose earlier than many other communities at the dawn of human history as a necessary form of life and form of group struggle for existence. The attempts so far made to define the concept of ethnic community have proved unsuccessful, we think, usually because the investigators have mainly tried to compile a set of criteria for it with almost no consideration of the character of the connections between the people constituting the community and the reflection of those connections in their consciousness. Ethnic self-consciousness — the awareness of belonging to a definite

84 v. KOZLOV

people (narod) — manifests itself concretely in that a people's use of a single name for themselves as a people arises in the course of living for a long time. A strong influence is exerted over this development by the social environment, by prevalent ideas of a common descent, and by common historical destinies, etc. Being one of the forms of social consciousness, ethnic self-awareness plays a leading role in the existence of the ethnic community; in this respect it differs sharply from the problematical community of psychological traits with which it is occasionally confused. At a certain stage of development, ethnic self-consciousness, like other ideological forms, can take on a relative independence. It can persist for a long time even when there is a territorial and economiccultural rift between separate groups of a people and the main ethnic nucleus, and even when there is loss of the mother tongue. Cases of noncoincidence of language and ethnic affiliation make it necessary in practice to employ the criterion of ethnic (national) self-consciousness to determine nationality when taking a census. The criterion of language would take second place in these cases. Ethnic self-consciousness can have reverse impact on the factors generating it, which manifests itself, for example, in reviving of the mother tongue, in political and territorial unification, etc. Without attempting here to resolve fully the problem of the specific nature of ethnic self-consciousness, we would point out that it is distinguished from religious consciousness primarily by being directed towards the people (narod) and not to some other-world object, and from racial consciousness by centering its attention in distinguishing the kinship of people not upon external physical characteristics but on their linguistic and cultural peculiarities and features of their way of life. In order to achieve stability and normal development, the ethnic community strives to take the form of a social organization. The tribe, as an ethnic community, is usually also a form of social organization. When class society evolves and the state takes the place of the clan-andtribe organization, the ethnic community displays a tendency to take the form of a state structure; it is not without reason that nearly all national movements are directed toward the setting up of a national state or some form of autonomy within the framework of a multinational state. The difference between an ethnic community and a state community shows most clearly in multinational states where ethnic self-consciousness is linked with people's linguistic and cultural peculiarities and their way of life, and among oppressed national minorities with a struggle for national equality. In national states as such, ethnic (national) self-consciousness often merges with awareness of belonging to the state, and with a feeling of patriotism.

On the Concept of Ethnic Community

85

To conclude this brief analysis of the elements of the ethnic community, we would refer again to the definition suggested by Tokarev. His definition is particularly open to criticism where it says that the ethnic community may be based on one of the forms of social connection enumerated by him, viz., "community of origin, language, territory, state affiliation, economic links, cultural pattern, religion (where it is preserved)". We cannot accept this statement even apart from such strange "social connections" as "tenor of cultural life", since if the ethnic community may be based solely on linguistic links it becomes impossible to distinguish it from the linguistic community. In cases where the ethnic community is based solely on state affiliation it is unclear how it differs from the state community. It is particularly ill-advised to relate this condition to such "social connections" as community of origin (which in Tokarev's view is most clearly manifested in "identity of anthropological type") and religion. As an example of a people allegedly based on community of origin, Tokarev cites the Negroes of the USA, forgetting that the ancestors of the Negro population of the USA were brought from different regions of Africa, belonged to various peoples, and consequently had no common ethnic origin, although, of course, they had similar racial features and a definite common destiny linked with their new situation. In fact, this population is mulatto in its majority, with different degrees of racial mixture, i.e., there is no similarity of anthropological type, and furthermore, it is not a separate people (narod) at all but a special group within the American nation (Berzina, 1962:289). The imprecision of Tokarev's formula is the more regrettable since the relation of race and ethnos, race and ethnic community, is indeed an intricate one (Efimov, 1966). In Soviet science the view has become firmly established that there is no organic connection between race and language, that the process of race formation and that of ethnic formation did not in general coincide (Roginskii, Levin, 1955:330), although the fact that the majority of the peoples of the world have a comparatively uniform racial composition (as regards the major races, and in a number of cases, also as regards the smaller ones) is not a matter of change. Racial differences are clearly evidence of the heterogeneous origin and history of their bearers, and undoubtedly delay the development of a common ethnic self-consciousness. It has required a lengthy process of biological mixing with the formation of numerous transitional racial types for Caucasians, Mongoloids, and Negroids to form united peoples in Latin America (such as Cubans, Brazilians, etc.). As for religion, common religious persuasion — religious community — can sometimes coincide with the ethnic community. As the history of

86 v. KOZLOV

mediaeval Europe and of Near Eastern countries shows, religious consciousness sometimes supplants ethnic self-consciousness, but religion of itself can neither establish nor preserve ethnic community, but can only contribute to it. Tokarev's example to demonstrate the strength of religious ties, the Jews, "scattered all over the world but not having lost their ethnic unit", is not very convincing. There is no doubt that Judaism, as a most clearly expressed "national" religion, has played and still plays an important role in the life of Jews, and is reflected in their selfconsciousness and in certain features of their culture and way of life. The ancient Hebrew people, however, took shape several centuries before the Judaic religion, and the ethnic peculiarity of the Jews who settled originally in European countries is to be explained not simply by religious factors but also by socioeconomic ones. Judaism could not maintain the ethnic unity of the Jews. Even in the Middle Ages they were divided into two main streams — the Sephardim speaking Ladino, and the Ashkenazim speaking Yiddish. In the subsequent period the ethnic isolation of the group of Jews living in various countries became even more marked, and for some of them (especially the Jewish population of the USSR), Judaism has already lost its significance as an ethnic determinant. The Jews have long ceased to be a single people (narod), and many groups of them have nothing left in common except an identical self-name and certain, not infrequently vague, ideas about a common origin and history. The other examples given by Tokarev in this connection are also lacking in conviction.4 In conclusion, let us formulate a definition of ethnic community. An ethnic community is a social organism consolidated on a definite territory from groups of people under the conditions — (already present, or achieved by them in the course of the development of economic and socio-cultural connections) — of a common language, common features of culture and way of life, a number of common social values and traditions, and a considerable intermingling of racial components sharply differentiated in the past. The basic characteristics of an ethnic community are ethnic self-consciousness and a common name for themselves (self-naming), a common language, territory, peculiarities of psychological traits, culture, way of life, and a definite form of social and territorial organization (or an aspiration to create such an organization). This brief formulation does not, of course, reflect the whole variety of reality, and * Without going into the details of these fairly complex cases we would remark that the Maronites mentioned by Tokarev are considered in Soviet ethnographic literature not as a special ethnic community, but as" a part of the Lebanese people, the Yesidi, a religious sect within the Kurdish people, etc.

On the Concept of Ethnic Community

87

its concrete application calls for its supplementing in various ways as follows from the examples discussed above. It is quite clear, for example, that the criteria of community of language and territory can usually only be fully applied to the main ethnic nucleus of a particular people because of the marked territorial mixing of peoples and processes of linguistic assimilation. A more complete unravelling of the essence of the main elements of the ethnic community could only be given in a number of specialized articles.

Contemporary Ethnic Processes in the USSR

Experience of a Socio-Ethnic Survey (Relating to the Tatar ASSR)

Yu. ARUTJUNJAN

CERTAIN THEORETICAL PREMISES It is not possible in a modern, socially differentiated society to judge ethnic processes according to the ethnos as a whole. In particular, by comparing the ethnic and the social, the object of socio-ethnic research being undertaken today is to indicate what is peculiar to the ethnic processes taking place in various social environments and situations. This was the aim of a socio-ethnic survey undertaken by sociologists of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Tatar ASSR. In embarking on the survey we had first to resolve several theoretical problems. It was of decisive importance to establish an adequate criterion of the social environment represented by classes, social strata, and social groups in Soviet society. The conception of the social structure of Soviet society that has dominated our literature for some time seemed too general and unsuitable for analysis. The category of collective farmer embraces both the chairmen of collective farms and unskilled rank and file members; employee embraces professors and bookkeepers. We came up against a need to develop a fuller, more detailed, and more varied classification. Taking a number of theoretical considerations as our premises, we based our classification on quality of labor, covering a continuum of "physical-mental labor" from simple labor to complex, from carrying out orders to giving them.1 In addition to the quality of labor, attention was also paid to the First published in Sovetskaja etnografija, N4 (1968). 1 The methodological principles for elaborating social structure have been developed by the writer in a number of works (Problemy, 1968: 102-107; Arutjunjan, 1966 a, b).

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sphere of employment or performance of work. In this connection a distinction was made between town and country, and in the countryside between socio-economic spheres, i.e., between the state sector and the collective farm-cooperative sector. A distinction was also made between branches of the economy as between forms of industrial work, agriculture, services, etc. In as much as we were concerned with the social structure of the whole population and not just the working population, we also bore in mind the non-productive sphere: educational institutions, the army, housework, etc. The working scheme of social structure that we employed is given in Table 1. Table 1. Social Structure of Socialist Society Sphere of Activity predominantly productive Social group by type of work

non-productive

town

country

state sector

collective farm cooperative sector school

army

housework

Intelligentsia (A) administrative creative (artistic) scientific productive mass (doctors, teachers) Employees (B) Skilled manual workers (Q Unskilled manual workers (D)

Another theoretical problem was determination of the trend of ethnic processes in social spheres. How, and in what concrete way, do ethnic and social relations impinge on one another? What are the subjects to be studied in this field? In what do these processes manifest themselves? We distinguished the following: 1. changes in the ethnic composition of social groups; 2. the effect of the ethnic factor on social mobility, i.e., the influence of national affiliation on a person's social development; 3. changes in national interests, and their links with social interests

Experience of a Socio-Ethnic Survey

93

(the most general form of national interest is the striving to preserve the identity of one's own nation, culture, language, and statehood. National interests, however, always have their social epicenter and in essence serve as the national shell for social interests; different social groups within nations are consciously, but more often unconsciously, interested in preserving their culture and statehood to varying degrees, stemming from specific social drives and motives.); 4. the manifestation of a national psychology as a component part of the social psychology of various social groups, the expression of national self-consciousness in groups, occasionally overlapping with national prejudice and ethnocentrism; 5. changes in the proportion of the elements of national and international culture, traditions, and innovations in social groups. Thus we were interested in the most varied ethnic characteristics of social groups as differentiated by quality of labor. Whereas the last of these subjects, the ratio between tradition and innovation in culture is common to ethnographers and has been treated by them in detail (although without linking it with socio-occupational groups based on quality of labor), the first four have not yet been given sufficient attention. Because we had set ourselves not so much traditional, historical, and reconstructive tasks as practical, regulative, and administrative tasks that are becoming more and more common in the social sciences, these trends were basic to our research.

PROCEDURE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE SURVEY Simultaneously with these theoretical problems we also had to resolve practical ones connected with the organization of our research, including what was probably the most vital question of all — the choice of the field of investigation. Where and how should we make this test of the socioethnic fabric? After examining several possible areas, we settled on the Tatar ASSR as a republic that met our basic requirements for a field of study, and quite fully reflected the general socioeconomic conditions of the country. Tataria is an industrial-agrarian republic with a highly developed industry; agriculture occupies an important place in its economy. It is also close to the All-Union position in its socio-demographic characteristics as well as in its basic socioeconomic ones (see Table 2). Thus Tataria was close to the general average for the USSR in all the main indices recorded in the census of 1959, although it has, in fact,

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YU. ARUTJUNJAN

Table 2. Comparative Social and Demographic Indices of the Population of Tataria* (in percentages)

Tatar ASSR

Difference

42

-10

20.7

18.9

- 1.8

45 55

43 57

2 + 2

Parameters

USSR

Urban population

52

Population engaged in mental labor Sex composition male female Population with higher education incomplete higher, secondary, and incomplete secondary education

1.8

26.3

Social groups: workers

48.2

employees

20.1

collective 31.4 farmers individual peasants and non-cooperated 0.3 artisans Population of working age by source of income employed 74.4 self-employed in personal land holding dependents pensioners and students on grants

Spread of the data (maximum and minimum) according to administrative divisions (regions, territories, and republics)

4.2 13.5

5.4

92 (Murmansk Region) 18 (Mordvinian ASSR)

3.1 (Magadan Region) 0.5 (Komi-Permyak Nat. Area)

1.4

- 0.4

25.8

- 0.5

71.7 (Kemerovo Reg.) 21 (Moldavian SSR) 32.6 (Chukchee Nat. Area.) 11.0 (Moldavian SSR) 67.5 (Moldavian SSR) 1.8 (Murmansk Region)

45.2

-3

18

- 2.1

36.4

+ 5

1.0 (Chuvash ASSR) 0.0 (Murmansk Region)

0.4

+ 0.1

79.8

+ 5.4

14.7 (Aginskij Buryat Nat. Area) 3.5 0.1 (Murmansk Region) 21.6 (Sakhalin Region) 11.4 7.4 (Evenk Nat. Area)

- 0.7

5.3

- 0.1

38.5 (Magadan Region) 16.8 (Tuva Region)

84.9 (Chuvash ASSR) 64.8 (North Ossetian ASSR)

8.3 (Tomsk Region) 1.8 (Taimyr Nat. Area)

- 2.1

a rather more agrarian profile; it is also below average as regards the weight of the urban population, and in the proportion of people engaged in mental labor and relative numbers of workers, employees, and persons with higher or secondary education. In none of these instances was • The table has been compiled from Itogi SSSR (1962: 13. 72, 81, 92,93, 98, 130); Itogi RSFSR (1963: 24-25. 137. 140. 152, 153, 158-59, 160-61, 162-63); Narodnoje (1966:7).

Experience of a Socio-Efhnic Survey

95

the difference so great as to be vital; and (as regards scatter) Tataria fell within the limits of the average. It was to be expected that it would be even closer to the All-Union mean at the time of the survey since industrialization had continued between 1959 and 1967 and urbanization had proceeded at an accelerated pace. While reflecting the social structure and social processes of the country as a whole to a considerable extent, Tataria was both a well developed social organism and typical of the country. All the socially advanced groups of the population, including the artistic, scientific, and technical intelligentsia, were represented there. Disposing of a large-scale industry, research institutes, a university and colleges, a conservatory, and an opera company, Tataria presented great possibilities for the most varied types of activity and quite broad opportunities for, and a high degree of, social mobility. In addition, ethnic processes were clearly expressed. The ethnic composition of the population was most varied, but at the same time there were large basic ethnic groups, Tatars and Russians who together constituted 90 per cent of the population, which made it a suitable field for studying the interaction of Russian and the local national culture. Tatars and Russians are different from one another both genetically and historically. If the effect of the process of mutual influence of cultures and languages and of assimilation has been tested here, so also has the stability of the ethnos. The next step consisted in drawing up a questionnaire and verifying the sampling. The questionnaire was made in two variants, one urban, the other rural, with maximum unification of their main parts. The questionnaires asked for basic information on the living conditions of the people interviewed, their place of work, level of responsibility, education, and housing conditions. Points reflecting cultural habits and how informed the person was were recorded in some detail, and one group of questions dealt with attitudes toward international relations. On the rural poll papers (questionnaire and interview), we employed the principle of spreading questions over the stages of the person's life, which made questioning convenient and natural. The rural questionnaire was so drawn up that the answers could be recorded on a single punch card to facilitate and speed up processing. Questions were mainly closed-ended (i.e., several possible alternative answers were provided), which enabled the questionnaires to be completed on an average of fifteen minutes. For rural localities copies of the questionnaire were provided in Tatar. The alternative replies were coded in advance in a binary system suitable for processing on an M-20 computer and tabulator. In the end it was decided to correlate the objective data on

96

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the person interviewed with his national self-consciousness in order to obtain an idea of the significance of separate factors in educating internationalism. Special attention was paid to characterizing social and occupational mobility, and recording the job and education of the person interviewed not only at the time of questioning but also from the outset of his (or her) working life, as well as the jobs of his parents. It was hoped thus to clarify the correlation between social mobility, national affiliation, knowledge of languages, etc. In studying the rural population we employed a tie-up of the questionnaire answers with an ecological description of the locality, which proved to be effective. At each populated point surveyed, we filled up a special form on which the main information about the settlement was recorded: the ethnic composition of the population (whether predominantly Tatar, predominantly Russian, or mixed), the number of inhabitants (under 100, 101-200, 201-500, etc.), the distance from towns, the distance to schools, clubs, etc. The data of these forms were also coded for processing and recorded on the punched cards together with the answers from the questionnaire. We were enabled to elucidate the dependence of social and ethnic processes on ecology; for example, the spread of the Russian language in Tatar villages and of Tatar in Russian villages, the effect of the size of settlement on the cultural level of the population, etc. The questionnaires, both urban and rural, were preliminarily tested in enterprises in Kazan and in villages in the Lajshevo District of the Tatar ASSR where the work was done by a team led by M. N. Guboglo. This team had a double purpose, one methodological (to check the questionnaire and the sampling) and the other informative (collecting the information required on a scale sufficiently large for prior evaluation of the main problems of the survey). In the end five hundred questionnaires were completed on two collective farms and a state farm in quotas representative of the occupational groups in the farms studied. Four months later, having checked the instrumentation and sampling, the Institute's Department of Concrete Sociological Research carried out a mass survey. During August and September 1967, ten thousand people were interviewed with the help of the Party and Komsomol organizations of Tataria. In the towns — Kazan, the new industrial center of Almetjevsk, and the small, old town of Menzelinsk — a one per cent sample of the working population was made. In the three rural districts linked with these towns, namely the Pestrinchin, Almetjevsk, and Menzelinsk Districts, the population of thirty-five villages was surveyed. The populated points were selected so as to reflect all the types of rural settlement in Tataria in proportions characteristic of the Republic.

Experience of a Socio-Ethnic Survey

97

The samples were broken down by occupational and technical groups differentiated according to quality of labor. The following groups were differentiated: the rural intelligentsia — leaders of the highest links (chairmen of collective farms, directors of state farms, directors of schools, directors of enterprises); leaders of middle links (departmental managers of state farms, team leaders, etc.); rural specialists of the highest link (agronomists, zoo technicians, engineers, and teachers with higher education); specialists of the middle link (predominantly those with secondary technical education); employees in the administrative apparatus (cashiers, bookkeepers, managers of day nurseries [creches]); skilled industrial workers (tractor drivers, truck drivers, garage mechanics) ; skilled non-industrial manual workers (bricklayers, carpenters); permanently employed unskilled workers (mainly stockmen); and finally the large class of people in the country who are quite unskilled (mainly laborers working by the job). The sampling was not proportional. The smallest categories in the village (intelligentsia and employee) were given a maximum quota of 50 percent, while only 10 per cent of the non-working population was sampled. The sampling was carried out according to the "Household Register", which was first checked at the village Soviet. The results of the count of questionnaires already made indicated that the quotas laid down were met in the main; in fact 45 per cent of leaders of the highest link were interviewed, 53 per cent of the specialists, 52 per cent of the employees, 45 per cent of the mechanics and drivers, 20 per cent of the general laborers, and 9.7 per cent of the non-working population. In order to establish the data for the general population it was proposed to weight these quantities, and by means of various correction factors to reduce them to a unit share of the representation. As a result of such a significant sample of each socio-occupational group we obtained quite representative data. The calculations already made indicate that the actual error in the sample was not more than 1 per cent, even in the basic criterion of our survey (nationality). According to the returns of the 1959 census, the proportion of Russians in the rural Russo-Tatar population was 35 per cent; in our sample, Russians constituted 34.5 per cent, i.e., an actual sampling error of 0.5 per cent. In view of the fact that migration from the village is more marked among Russians than among Tatars and that the ratio is changing in favor of Tatars, it can be supposed that there were fewer Russians at the time of the survey than in 1959. i.e., the actual error in this criterion may be quite negligible. The data of the survey of the rural population have already been

98

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processed by computer (the check sample fully, and the main survey to a significant extent), while the urban data are being processed by machine at the time of the writing of this article.

SOME RESULTS We are attempting to summarize the preliminary results of the survey of the rural population, which permits us to assess how far the principal hypotheses of our survey have been substantiated. In the program of the survey, relevancy of socioeconomic nonTable 3. Social Groups and Socio-Ethnic Processes (in percentages) Unskilled workers and collective farmers Groups by type of work

regular

season

Total number questioned

217

68

71 29 1 5 38

73 27 2 7 37

IS

16

Culture and Language Fluent Russian (or Russian and Tatar) At work using Russian more often, or both languages Usually speaking at home Russian or both languages Considering it useful for children to learn in a Russian school Children studying in Russian schools Reading fiction and belle lettres usually in Russian Reading newspapers in Russian or both languages Celebrating religious festivals (Ramadan, Easter, etc.) Having a positive attitude toward baptism or circumcision

34 35 24 78 38 44 19 77 34 37 45

36 29 25 74 45 47 14 87 32 37 46

Attitude to national relations Considering nationality of the leadership not to affect the work of the collective Having a positive attitude to nationally mixed marriages

71 74

65 78

General criteria Nationality: Tatar Russian Education (higher or specialized secondary) Party membership With influence on decisions in production collectives Monthly income per member of family in excess of 30 roubles (not counting income from holding on)

Experience of a Socio-Ethnic Survey

99

homogeneity of labor was hypothesized as well as that this absence of homogeneity affected both the socioeconomic and ethnic criteria. The data of the survey indicate that the elimination of surviving traditional forms of culture and the spread of modern ones occurs unevenly in the various social groups. Modern forms of culture are most common among the relatively advanced social layers while traditional forms are most firmly entrenched among manual workers, though the sphere of employment has no essential significance here. The socially advanced groups, especially the intelligentsia, are distinguished not only by higher income, a higher level of education, higher public and social activity, reflected in Party membership, and influence

Skilled workers and collective farmers

Mechanics

Employees

Di

C

B

87

438

75

26

45

65

19

65 35 1 10 45

63 37 1 15 50

64 36 16 36 68

54 46 42 35 70

69 31 20 62 85

66 34 83 61 90

68 32 79 84 100

27

34

37

46

51

69

79

43 64 30 91 55 55 31 91 45 30 31

52 56 35 81 54 68 47 96 62 22 26

60 49 37 91 50 76 65 97 57 12 24

69 76 38 89 47 81 61 100 73 23 15

55 66 35 89 45 76 67 98 71 11 17

69 73 47 91 69 91 84 99 92 8 14

79 90 42 95 77 90 84 95 69 16 5

85 72

78 79

79 81

62 73

74 75

77 68

58 68

Specialists

Leaders

of middle rank

Specialists

Leaders

of the highest rank A!

A2

100

YU. ARUTJUNJAN

on important decisions in production collectives, but also by cultured habits and customs (reading of fiction and belle lettres, knowledge of languages, etc.). These features of the socially advanced groups are graphically reflected in Table 3 (for the male population). In addition, there is an almost complete elimination among these groups (as the Table shows) of certain survivals of the past, as shown for example in a negative attitude to religious festivals, ceremonies, and rites. To evaluate the contentment of the various social groups with their social position, indices of social mobility are also extremely important. In the program of the survey the hypothesis was hazarded that "the national factor is not of essential importance in social mobility". The results have confirmed that hypothesis; in the data of the Lajshevo District we have interesting groupings characterizing mobility as between and within generations (see Tables 4 and 5). Judging from these Tables, the Tatars in the countryside are more mobile than the Russians. A higher proportion of Tatars than of Russians have raised their status in comparison with their parents. Whereas the fathers of 84 per cent of the Tatar intellectuals belonged to the category of unskilled manual laborers, only 64 per cent of the Table 4. Intergeneration Mobility (Intermobility) (in percentages) Russians Social origin (by father)

Social group Intelligentsia (A) Employees (B) Mechanics (Q Unskilled laborers regular (Di) seasonal (D2) Intelligentsia (A) Employees (B) Mechanics (Q Unskilled laborers regular (DO seasonal (D2)

No. questioned

A

B

C

D,

D2

Total percentage of fathers occupied in manual labor

30 27 39

13 7 16

23 6 8

— — 15

29 50 5

35 36 56

64 86 76

43 67

—5

3 6

6 6

26 6

65 77

97 90

— —9

34 26 20

50 61 62

84 82 91

43 23

46 73

95 96

Tatars 24 18 32

89 40

8 —9

3 4

8 13 — 1.6 —

6 —

Experience of a Socio-Ethnic Survey

101

Table 5. Mobility Within Generations (Intramobility) (in percentages) Russians

Social group

irnmobile (status lowered)

Tatars stable (status mobile un(status changed) raised)

immobile (status lowered)

stable (status mobile un(status changed) raised)

69 50 23

— — —

41 38 19

6

94

Intelligentsia (A) — 8 Employees (B) Mechanics (Q General laborers and — other unskilled 8 manual workers

92

Total

58

31 42 77

— 38

48

59 62 81

— 50

Russian intelligentsia came from this sphere. Correspondingly, Tatars had raised their social position faster in the course of their work. Thus 50 per cent of the Tatars questioned had raised their status since the beginning of their working career, and only 38 per cent of the Russians had done so. This is explained by the fact that Tatars were more backward than Russians in both social position and education in the past; usually starting from a less favorable position, they had to cover a greater distance in social growth, encouraged by the Soviet national policy of liquidating actual inequality. On the other hand, Russians were more inclined to migrate and make their social and occupational advance outside the village. As a result of the greater mobility of Tatars in the present generation, the representation of Tatars in the socially advanced groups in the village already corresponds, in the main, to that of Russians. Tatar men are equally represented among all the socio-occupational categories of the rural population. The population of Tatar men among the categories of unskilled and skilled labor is identical in the main and corresponds to their proportion in the total population. As for Tatar women their representation in the groups of skilled workers is still rather backward (see Table 6). Our research program also included the proposition "that a condition for rapid eradication of national prejudice is a high degree of social mobility". This proposition, as the preliminary results indicate for the bulk of those sampled, has not been confirmed by the survey. The socially more advanced and more mobile categories of the population, in spite of their successful and intensive acquisition of modern culture, their dropping of survivals of the traditional culture, and their knowledge of Russian, have basically the same attitude to national relations.

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YU. ARUTJUNJAN

Table 6. National Composition. Percentage of Tatars in Socio-occupational Groups (in percentages of the total number of groups members)

Leaders of the highest rank Leaders of the middle rank Specialists with high qualifications Specialists with middle qualifications Employees Mechanics Skilled, non-industrial manual workers Unskilled workers, regularly employed Unskilled seasonal workers

Men

Women

68.4 68.9 66.1 53.8 64.0 63.0 65.5 73.5 68.4

not available 45.4 64.6 40.2 49.6

— 40.0 70.4 71.4

The attitude was recorded in various ways. The attitude of those questioned toward mixed marriages and toward joint work in collectives of mixed composition, and their preference for leaders of their own nationality was obtained in the survey of the main bulk. The replies revealed a high degree of internationalization, practically identical for all groups (see Table 7). To the question on choice of direct leadership, an absolute majority of all groups of the population answered that "the nationality of the leaders has no significance". To the question, "do you approve of marriages between Tatars and Russians?", the reply, "nationality has no significance, the main thing is the personal qualities of the person, and love for each other", also received an absolute majority of votes.3 Nevertheless, the preliminary results of the survey show that there is no marked positive connection between the replies to these questions and social mobility, social position, material prosperity, public activity, education, or knowledge of Russian. Thus, attitude toward relations between nationalities remains almost unchanged from the less socially advanced groups to the more advanced ones, while at the same time we observe an unbroken sequence of growth of all indices concerning culture and knowledge of Russian. An insignificant positive link between attitude to relations between nationalities and objective factors of cultural development is traceable only in one case, that of fluent mastery of Russian. Tatars in the various socio-occupational groups who knew Russian often had higher indices in the attitudes studied (Table 7). We found the same tendency of an absence of any positive link between attitudes and social position in the data from the experimental survey from which the stereotypes of Russian and Tatar were obtained. Those 8

This question was put into the questionnaire by L. M. Drobizheva. The material obtained by her from a survey of Belorussian villages and villages in other national districts gave results analogous to ours (Drobizheva, 1967).

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Table 7. Knowledge of Russian and Attitudes

A! A2

B C D

Tatar Positive attitude to leadership of another nationality

Men

1

2

73 76 70 85 69

54 61 77 69 65

1 56 88 65 70 71

Positive attitude to mixed marriages

Tatar Women Positive attitude to leadership Positive attitude of another to mixed nationality marriages

2

1

2

1

2

59 48 83 68 67

85 67 91

59 63 57

73 76 68

57 78 51 _

— 77

— 45

— 77

54

Notes: 1. Tatars speaking Russian fluently or speaking both Russian and Tatar; 2. Tatars speaking only Tatar fluently.

interviewed were asked: "Which of the following attributes is characteristic of Tatars and which of Russians?" Then followed a list of various positive qualities — kindness, hospitality, industriousness, enterprise, and talent. These qualities are not as objective and definite, of course, as hair color, height or weight; their attribution to a whole nation reflects the subjective attitude of the person questioned to representatives of another nationality, i.e., his evaluation of a nation. The test indicated that all groups of the population, Tatars and Russians alike, esteemed their own nationality higher. The Russians, belonging to the larger and more numerous nation, as was to be expected, revealed a comparatively slight difference between their self-appraisal and the appraisal of the other nationality. As for social groups, the difference between the two evaluations was almost the same among the intelligentsia as among the general laborers. The system of facts characterizing national attitudes given here is evidence that education in internationalism depends on other variables with little connection with culture and language, and determined, it would seem, by a complex set of socioeconomic factors. We hope, in the course of a further survey to throw additional light on this problem. In this article we have tried to give the reader only a general impression of the character of the socioeconomic investigations being made. It is a promising direction, broadening our knowledge of the essentials of socioethnic processes and of the concretization and extension of the subject matter of ethnosociological research. Together with purely ethnographic studies it should find an important place in the arsenal of our social sciences.

Contemporary Ethnocultural Processes in Udmurtia (Program and Method of Investigation)

E. VASILJEVA, V. PIMENOV, L. KHRISTOLJUBOVA

In the broad spectrum of research into the ethnic processes taking place in the Soviet Union, problems of how far traditional ways of life and culture are preserved or eroded in any particular people occupy a special place. In 1967-68 the present writers attempted to collect data that would throw light on these problems, by taking the example of a single people, the Udmurts.1 The main programmatic principles adopted in the survey are outlined here and the techniques, organization, and procedures employed described. I. A systematic approach to the analysis of social phenomena is being more and more widely adopted in modern science. In this connection it seems desirable to treat the basic object of ethnographic research, the ethnos or ethnic community, as a certain, relatively separate, dynamic social system with its own inner structure. Unfortunately, the structure of the ethnos at this level has still not been worked out, but if we base ourselves on the concepts of ethnic community traditional to Soviet ethnography, we can single out a set of essential characters that are typical of an important aspect of the ethnos. These include for example, mother tongue, spiritual and material culture, family life, and certain forms of ethnic self-consciousness. Each of these aspects can also be taken as a system of a lower order. Two aspects of studying and describing the ethnos are possible: First published in Sovetskaja etnografija, N2 (1970). The Udmurts were formerly know as Votiaks and many Western writers still use the old name. In this article, the modern Soviet usage will be adhered to. — Ed. 1

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(a) within its own framework as a system, with the aim of studying its inherent properties, relations, and tendencies (in which case we abstract it from outside influences); and (b) in a broader system, in the group of ethnic communities in which the ethnos studied is organically included as a subsystem. In our case investigation preference was given to the first aspect, but it was necessary to take a number of outside influences into consideration. For that purpose the concept of social-ethnic situation was introduced to describe the position of the ethnos studied in the general context of its internal and external connections and influences and to determine the probable trend of these connections at the 'comment' the investigation was carried out. Several different ways of penetrating the ethnos are possible. We studied the individual whom we treated as a representative of the ethnos and the bearer of that ethnic feature, the ETHNOPHOR. The justification for this approach is, on the one hand, the well-known Marxist definition of personality as an aggregate of social relations (including, consequently, ethnic relations), and on the other hand, the view of social processes (i.e., ethnic ones as well) as mass processes, the laws governing which are expressed as probabilities or statistical tendencies. Taking these as our programmatic premises, let us define the field of our research, the ethnographic situation, and formulate our main problems and hypotheses. The survey concerned one people, the Udmurts, living in the Udmurt ASSR. Our field of view necessarily included all the social classes, strata, and groups of this people (workers, peasants, and intellectuals — more detailed stratification), their composition by sex, age, family or marital status, place of residence (rural or urban settlements), and ethnographic group (Southern, Northern, Central Udmurts, and Besermans). According to the data available, the social-ethnic situation had the following features. The Udmurts are a Soviet socialist nation. They have state autonomy (since 1920). Their numbers within the boundaries of the Udmurt ASSR (according to the 1959 census) are 475,900. Apart from Udmurts (35.59 per cent), the ethnic composition of the Republic includes Russians (56.75 per cent), Tatars (5.48 per cent), and other nationalities (2.18 per cent) among whom the Udmurts are interspersed. There has been a migration of population from village to town, and from Udmurtia to neighboring regions and republics, as well as in the opposite direction. Although the general growth of towns is quite high, the degree of urbanization of Udmurts is not high, and the Udmurt population of the various towns of the Republic is between 7 and 30 per cent. On average 18.5 per cent of Udmurts in the Udmurt ASSR are town-

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107

Udmurt* Russians

• · ' Tatars Mari Α o

ί 2

Figure 1. Ethnic composition of the population of Udmurtia and settlements, covered by field work in 1968. 1. rural settlements 2. other settlements 3. urban settlements

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dwellers (1959); it should be noted that townsmen constituted only 7.5 per cent of the Udmurt population of the Republic in 1939. The social structure of the Udmurt nation is the same in principle as that of the other Soviet socialist nations, but the numbers of the working class and intelligentsia are lower than the average for the RSFSR. The Udmurt language belongs to the Permian group of the FinnoUgrian branch of the Uralic family. The overwhelming majority of Udmurts in the Republic consider it their mother tongue, but (in 1959) 6.72 per cent gave Russian as their mother tongue. In the South of the Republic some Udmurts also speak Tatar as well as Russian, and some consider it their mother tongue. An absolute majority of Udmurts speak Russian fluently, which was important to take into account when working out the plan of our survey. Traditional forms of material culture are well preserved in rural houses and certain farm buildings, but much less so in women's dress (the men have long since not worn national costume); national types of utensils, farm tools, etc., are even less preserved. The folklore stratum of spiritual culture is appreciable but has a tendency to decrease. The professional stratum of the national culture, on the contrary, was created only in Soviet times and is increasing in scope and scale. Its development has been fostered by the founding of organizations of writers and journalists, a national (Udmurt) theater, a song and dance ensemble, and by means of mass communication (i.e., radio broadcasting and television in Udmurt, an Udmurt magazine, two republican and several district newspapers, and a publishing house, etc.). The observance of religious and calendar customs and festivals is much reduced among Udmurts, but family rituals are preserved. Long links with the Russian and Tatar peoples have left a marked impression on all components of the Udmurt ethnos, and this is evident in the language, the material and spiritual culture, etc. The constant close community has also had the effect that there is no place in Udmurt consciousness for anti-Russian and anti-Tatar prejudices. Among the features of the ethnic psychology, attention needed to be given to the marked shyness of the Udmurts. Finally, as was known earlier, there is a notable difference in all ethnographic characteristics between the North and South of Udmurtia; these characteristics are most strongly expressed in the South and less so in the Center and North. On the basis of our general view of the social-ethnic situation in Udmurtia, we formulated three main questions for our investigation.

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1. How far are national forms of life and culture preserved among various social strata of Udmurts? 2. What components of the ethnos are most (or least) stable? 3. What are the general trends in the development of the Udmurts as an ethnos? The posing of these aims was dictated by their scientific and practical urgency, by the requirement of a more exact delineation of the factors affecting the course of the ethnocultural process, and by the desirability of making a more or less reliable forecast and obtaining means of guiding the process, i.e., of optimizing it. In the course of the investigation three main hypotheses were to be tested: 1. The raising of the social status of an Udmurt leads on the whole in Udmurtia to a weakening of adherence to national values. 2. The relative stability of the different elements of the ethnos (in diminishing order) was (1) language, (2) ethnopsychological qualities, (3) spiritual culture of the professional layer, (4) customs and rituals, (5) spiritual culture of the folklore layer, and (6) material culture. 3. There is an increasing tendency for close assimilation of Udmurts to Russians, but the possibility of their independent ethnic development has not yet been exhausted. II. The posing of the problem called for the solution of another two tasks: (1) the choice of a suitable method for the investigation, and (2) the development of appropriate techniques. It became clear at the beginning that it was only possible to check our hypotheses by mass representative material that lent itself to a statistical treatment. (The statistical procedures for the collection of information were worked out by E. K. Vasiljeva.) We decided on the method of standard interviewing, considering that it gave the highest assurance in this case that the information would be credible, full, and reliable. It also combined the possibility of recording information verbally and expressing it numerically. The main working instrument of the investigation, the "ethnographic questionnaire" compiled by V. V. Pimenov, was worked out in accordance with the programmatic setting, the character of the tasks, and the method selected. A first variant was tested in the summer of 1967 in Southern Udmurtia, in the Highland-Mary District of the Mary ASSR, and in the Laishev District of Tataria (altogether around 200 persons

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E. VASILJEVA, V. PIMENOV, L. KHRISTOLJUBOVA

were interviewed in villages and towns). As a result questions "which worked badly" or which were not directly related to the problem were excluded, and the formulation of several others was improved. With the remainder it was possible to obtain a comparatively clear set of variants of the answers. The questionnaire was drawn up in accordance with our views on the essential features of the ethnos. Six groups of questions were distinguished which defined the ethnographic specifics of our research: (1) language; (2) material culture; (3) customs; (4) folklore; (5) professional spiritual culture; and (6) ethnic psychology. Each group or set of questions (each block) covered six attributes (parameters). They were intentionally made equal in a number of questions because this made it possible to measure the relative weight of each of them in the system of the ethnos. We encountered great difficulty in defining the concrete characteristics that should be included and measured in a group. Here we were guided by the experience of ethnographic studies and our own experience and the date of test inquiries, but intuition played no little role. In the end the structure of the groups acquired the following form: 1. the language — questions about mother tongue and degree of mastery of it, about the language of the family, the language at work, and in social life; and about knowledge of other Soviet languages; 2. the material culture — questions about dress, food, and utensils; 3. the customs — questions about weddings, birth rites, and funerals; 4. the folklore — questions about traditions, folk tales, folk songs, and dances; 5. the professional culture — questions about knowledge of national (Udmurt) writers, reading of national literature and press, knowledge of composers and their works; 6. the ethno-psychological — questions about ethnic preferences, national self-consciousness, degree of consciousness of belonging to one's nationality, etc. In a special group of questions (No. 7) three control questions were put, not to the informant but to the interviewer, about the attitude of the informant to the interview, the themes that aroused his interest, and the questions that he had difficulty in answering. In the biggest section (No. 8) there were nineteen questions, which included a number relating to social and demographic indices (sex, age, education, social position, etc.); certain questions were especially im-

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portant — those about the ethnic composition of the main reference groups, i.e., the family, the primary work group, neighbors, and friends. The questions were varied in character. Some were oriented toward elucidating the existence of a character or attribute, others towards determining how far the person interviewed was informed about the attribute, and still others toward discovering his attitude to the attribute. For example, in asking about customs, we began by asking the informant to describe the birth and christening customs, and then we inquired how, in his view, the birth of a baby should be marked, whether by observing the traditional folk customs or without it. Questions were also classified by other features. There were some that were intended to stimulate anamnesis or recollections in the informant ("How were you dressed at your wedding?"). The technique of posing a hypothetical situation encouraged anamnesis ("If you could begin your life over again, what kind of wedding would you choose when you married?"). This combination of questions diverse in style and character was designed to obtain quite varied and authentic information. There are no natural units for measuring ethnographic attributes. Since from the start it was proposed to process the information obtained quantitatively, and as far as possible by mechanical means, the working out of the method of measurement was looked upon as a priority task. We decided to combine verbal recording of information with an approximate evaluation of the expressiveness of the attribute according to a fourpoint scale (for example, "does not know", "does not know very well", "has a clear idea", "knows very well"). Consequently the intensity of an attribute was marked within the range 01 to 04. In certain cases we were able to introduce a more definite numerical criterion (for example, the number of national dishes known to the informant). The evaluation was made by the interviewer, but the existence of the verbal record enabled it to be checked. III. The collection of material for a far-reaching investigation of contemporary ethno-cultural processes is so laborious that it can only be done by a method of patchy coverage and random sampling. The subjects of our research were adult Udmurts (17 years of age and above) permanently resident in the territory of the Udmurt ASSR. Their numbers in 1968 were a little more than 300,000. In the light of the actual conditions and possibilities of our survey, the availability of personnel, the material and technical provisions, and times for performing the work, the size of the sample was limited to not more than 2000 to 2500 persons, which constituted 0.7 to 0.8 per cent of the general total.

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Tt was necessary first to establish whether a sample of 2000-2500 persons would provide representative data from which judgements about the aggregate could be drawn. The first condition for the authenticity and reliability of the sample data was that the sampled part should be sufficiently large to bring out the objective patterns of the process being studied. The proposed size of the sample satisfied that condition (see Table 1); it would ensure the singling out and analysis of the decisive trends although certain interconnections would not be disclosed with comprehensive fullness. Sampled data would be reliable if the numerical size of the sample is large enough so that mistakes in its representative character do not exceed permissible limits. The probable maximum error in the representative nature of a sample of 2000 persons was calculated to be 0.954 per cent. The calculations showed that with such an index as the proportion of women among adult Udmurts, which was around 63 per cent for the general aggregate, the limit of representative error was 2 per cent. The maximum size of the sampling error for the proportion of the elderly (aged 60 and over) among Udmurts and the proportion of persons considering Udmurt their mother tongue was 1.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively. Thus a sample of 2000 persons would yield data representative of the Republic as a whole. Table 1. Theoretical and Actual Sampling Error in the 1968 Survey Indices of the adult population of the Udmurt ASSR Percentage of women Percentage of persons aged 60 and over Percentage of persons whose mother tongue was Udmurt (A) in urban population (b) in rural population

Value of index from data

Sampling Error

Census

Sample

Theoretical

Actual

63.0

64.4

2.0

1.4

13.2

14.8

1.5

1.6

86.0 97.5

77.7 96.5

0.7

9.0 1.0

The size of the sample decided on for the project survey was 2300, i.e., the necessary minimum was raised by 15 per cent. Thus, a reserve was created in case of a shortage of data or of low-quality completion of questionnaires. The survey was based on the method of random sampling in which all units have an equal chance of being selected. This ensured proportion-

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al representation in the sample of all types and categories of units of the aggregate. In two cases this technique was complicated by the employment of special means of selection. The principle of proportional sampling was convenient for obtaining representative data on the aggregate as a whole, but at the same time it sacrificed the possibility of studying certain parts of the aggregate, small in numbers but important for the pattern being investigated. In our survey it was necessary to increase representation of the group of creative intellectuals, who might be too small in the general total. Therefore it was decided to complete another 100 questionnaires, in addition to the 2300, for persons of this social and professional group, in order to process them subsequently as an independent section. To preserve the actual proportions in the sampled aggregate it would have been necessary to take 1425 persons from the rural population and 875 townsfolk. This ratio was corrected by increasing the proportion of the urban population because a greater variation of characteristics has been noted among the inhabitants of towns. In addition it proved necessary to increase the volume of the town sample to a size permitting processing of the results in two groups for the urban and the rural populations. It was decided to sample 1300 persons in the rural population and 1000 in the towns. To restore the real ratio of rural and urban population in the Republic as a whole a correction would be introduced in the processing. In order to determine the optimal principle for organizing the work in the conditions of this survey, we were forced to check several variants of the sampling experimentally. The checks showed that it would be impossible to obtain full identification of the sampling procedure in town and country. The urban population of the Udmurt ASSR is concentrated in a limited number of populated points while the rural population is scattered over a considerable territory and a large number of inhabited places. In addition, the lists of units of the general aggregate needed a basis from which the sample would be made different in town and country. In the towns a zoned choice of units (disperse sample) was made. The urban population itself was divided in several groups (characteristic types) according to the size of the population and the proportion of Udmurts in it, the level of economic development, and the function of the town as a cultural and administrative center. A proportionate number of the population in each typical group was sampled. As a rule the sampled aggregate was taken at random from all the units comprising the typical group, but we were twice forced to depart from this

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procedure. The sheer number of settlements of urban type and sma towns (under 16,000 inhabitants) turned out to be too labor-consuming because of their great territorial dispersion, while their significance in the total population was comparatively small. Therefore, they were represented in the sample by a single point, the settlement of Uva. In addition, in order to reduce the volume of work, the town of Votkinsk was excluded from the number of towns surveyed and it was represented in the sample by another town of similar type. In the final analysis the towns of Izhevsk, Glazov, Sarapul, and Mozhga, and the workers' settlement of Uva were surveyed. As units of the sample we took the units of the aggregate, i.e., individual persons among adult Udmurts who were permanent residents of the town. For that purpose it is convenient to employ voters' lists or census lists if a survey is made soon after an election or the taking of a census. Because that possibility frequently did not exist, it was preferable to base ourselves mainly on data of the current population count. We employed the card indexes of the address bureaux. The fullness and authenticity were sufficiently reliable for the sampling in our survey, and in addition made it possible to distribute the units of the sampling aggregate over the territory of the town. If the sampling had been clustered, i.e., if we had taken city blocks, or households, or other large units, it would have proved difficult to maintain the representative character of the data, given the smallness of the sample and the considerable differentiation of the structure of the population in the different parts of a town. Whereas with a cluster sample one can base oneself on a stable list of clusters, with a list (or card index) of the population this is out of the question. Population, especially urban population, is mobile; any count material proves more or less out-of-date. Several reasons can be advanced for the partial discrepancy between the data of address bureaux and the actual composition of the population. The documentation of such events as death or change of residence takes place with a certain delay. It was necessary to make an empirical estimate of the size of the discrepancy between the data available and the actual situation. For our survey, sampling was carried out with a necessary reserve (up to 40 per cent of the size of the sampling aggregate). The technique of mechanical selection was employed. While the high density and concentration characteristic of towns enable sampling to be made by units, that method is inapplicable to the village. In rural localities and zones, two-stage cluster sampling was carried out. Administrative districts (four districts in which the pro-

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portion of the Udmurt population was under 4 per cent were not taken into account) were united into typical groups on the basis of a complex evaluation of ethnic and economic-geographical characteristics. The first stage of the sampling — the mechanical choice of cluster — was carried out in each of the four typical groups delineated. In this case the sampling units could also have been administrative subdivisions like the rural soviet or populated point, but rural Soviets are significantly bigger than the clusters that were optimal for our survey. It was also inexpedient to take populated points as units since their total number was large and the work would be complicated by the host of tiny populated points. The most convenient system proved to be the system of clusters compiled by the state statistical services for sample surveys. These clusters were drawn up in such a way that they had roughly the same size and consisted of compactly located populated points. Since it was necessary to select a small number of clusters, repeated mechanical selection was made with change of starting point. As a result the most appropriate variant was found to be the one that gave results closest to the mean for typical groups. When the clusters selected had been plotted on the map it proved that districts with different natural and climatic conditions and geographical locations were represented in the sample (the Yukama, Balezino, Selty, Syumsin, Igra, Zavyala, Mozhga, Nalopurga, and Alnash Districts). The sample included eighteen clusters embracing forty settlements (see map). The second stage of the sampling was the mechanical selection of households within the clusters. On the basis of Form No. 1 for Household Accounts (the "Household Register") at the rural Soviets, families were selected that were of Udmurt or mixed national composition in which there were adult Udmurts. The course of the choice was differentially established according to the number of Udmurt households in the cluster and the number of persons required to be selected in accordance with the proportional distribution of the sampling aggregate of typical groups. For selecting the exact member of the family to be interviewed a special scheme was worked out (see below). The choice of urban and rural populated points was made in accordance with the procedure settled on for the organization of the sample. There was a shortfall in rural localities of 80 persons and in urban localities of 79. This nevertheless raised the required minimum number since its initial volume had been calculated with a reserve. Consequently, from the proposed aggregate of 2300 units we succeeded in questioning 2141 persons. The main reasons for the shortfall were either the temporary absence of persons falling within the sample, or the impossibility

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of finding the required person because of inaccuracies in the lists. We surveyed various categories of the population so that the shortfall did not lead to any essential increase in the sampling error. The indices calculated for the sampling aggregate compare with the corresponding data of the census of 1959. As a rule the sampling data did not deviate essentially from the indices characterizing the whole adult Udmurt population, but it had to be remembered in making this comparison that the census data could be out-of-date. It is this that most likely explains the big deviation from the theoretical error of the proportion of the urban population who consider Udmurt as their mother tongue. Thus for the given volume of the sample we ensured obtaining sufficiently representative data on the Udmurt population of the Republic as a whole and for the following basic categories: (a) urban and rural population; (b) men and women; and (c) augmented social and professional groups. It is possible to form groups by combining these attributes and others, but in doing so it is necessary to avoid excessive division of the data. Where necessary the limited possibilities of dividing the sampling aggregate can be compensated by means of mathematical methods of processing (standardization, etc.). The comparatively small volume of the sample limits only the number of typical groups. The system of indices, including the whole complex of special ethnic characteristics calculated for each separate category of the population, does not suffer from this limitation. IV. Great significance was attached to the organizational and procedural aspects of the survey. With full support from the Udmurt Regional Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers of the Republic, the Udmurt Research Institute for History, Economics, and Literature under the Council of Ministers of the Udmurt ASSR, higher educational institutions and teacher training colleges, and other institutions, we succeeded in carrying through the organizational work without essential blunders, which ensured comparatively favorable conditions for gathering the primary information. The survey was carried out on an expedition basis. In the first stage in the summer (July-August) the rural population was surveyed, and in the second stage (November-December), Udmurts living in the towns and workers' settlements of the Republic. We considered it essential to inform the population in advance of the main aims and character of our work. For that purpose the head of

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the expedition made broadcasts over the regional radio and television. Reports were published in the republican newspaper at the beginning of the expedition's work. In each town radio broadcasts or press announcements were arranged. This informing of residents facilitated the work of the interviewers and enabled them to establish contact more quickly and easily. The backbone of the expedition was the Udmurt research team of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which varied in number from four to six persons (one scientific worker, one postgraduate student, and the remainder technical workers and assistants); in addition, there was a total of 220 voluntary temporary workers for carrying out the survey. In the summer period the staff of the expedition included twenty-seven second-year students from the history faculty of the Udmurt State Pedagogical Institute, for whom this involvement counted as fieldwork practice. They were divided into three subgroups, each of which was "in the field" for sixteen days. The expedition was divided into two teams which worked simultaneously. In forty days 1220 people were interviewed. Each interview required around two hours on average. In the second stage 1013 urban residents were surveyed (including ninety-four members of the creative intelligentsia). The organization of work in urban conditions proved much more complicated than in the villages. The contingent of interviewers in each town changed; in Izhevsk it consisted mainly of students of the history faculty of the Udmurt State Pedagogical Institute (some of whom had already had practical experience in the summer), and in Glazov of students from the local pedagogical institute. In Sarapul and Mozhga students of the teacher training college were used, while in the workers' settlements of Uva, where there is no specialized educational institution, the teachers of the local schools acted as interviewers. The interviewers did their work on a voluntary basis. None were released from their studies so that the tempo of the survey proved much slower in the towns than in the country, apart from the complications caused by the large number of incorrect addresses, the shift working of informants, and several other factors. We considered the task of training members of the expedition to be most important and gave it the maximum care and attention. The basis for their training was the "Instructions for Completing Ethnographic Questionnaires" drawn up by V. V. Pimenov. All interviewers received instruction according to a six-hour program, in the course of which

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the general problems of the survey were explained, the role of the interviewer in the "interviewer-informant" system was elucidated, and concrete examples of work with the questionnaires were gone into. Each question was read over, the best way of putting it to the informant was discussed, and the information required explained. Possible versions of replies were indicated with ways of recording them. On individual questions, instruction was given directly on the spot (for example, the types of houses). Interviewers were also given general information on the ethnography of Udmurts (national folk costume, dishes, and foods, family customs, and so on). Special attention was paid to the shyness and sensitivity peculiar to Udmurts; ways of overcoming this obstacle were suggested with the aim of obtaining the fullest possible information on each question. To test how far the technique of interviewing was grasped, the interview situation was imitated at the end of each lesson. Later, during the testing of the questionnaires and at conferences for exchanging experience of the work, each member of the expedition was individually given the pointers required. In all stages of the survey we tried to communicate to the interviewers the importance of the work they had undertaken and their responsibility for the quality of its fulfillment. In addition interviewers were informed that their work in the sampling procedure would be checked by means of control visits. Special attention was paid to ensuring that all members of the expedition had the same criteria for evaluating the expressiveness (force) of the attributes (parameters) included in the questionnaires. An important stage in the survey was the compiling of lists of persons to be interviewed. These lists were drawn up directly by visits to the locality, and in rural populated points the data of the "Household Register" was employed, as already mentioned. Each family (household) was represented in the lists by a single adult member. Families were classified according to the number of generations (children under 16.5 years of age were excluded from all calculations and processing), families of one, two, and three generations being distinguished. The procedure for compiling a list was as follows. The "Household Register" was gone through and the composition of each Udmurt family (or family containing Udmurts) established first of all according to the number of generations in it. When we encountered a family consisting of two members of the same generation (a man and a woman), the woman of that family was put on the list, and then the man from the next similar family. When a family consisted of members of two generations, a woman of the younger generation was taken from the first such family, a woman

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of the older generation from the second family, a man of the younger generation from the third family, and a man of the older generation from the fourth. When there were two, three, or more persons of the same generation and sex in a family, first the youngest was put on the list, and then the others. Families with three generations were treated in a similar way, youngest, middle, and oldest generations being distinguished. For those who did this job a work matrix, on which the alternation of persons according to generation, age, and sex was recorded, was compiled for self-checking. When the generation in the next family in order was represented by a single person, this person was entered on the list and a plus sign (+) entered on the matrix (it was not necessary in this case to distinguish the person's sex, since he or she was the only one to be included). In other cases women were indicated by F (woman) and men by M (man). In the end we obtained lists on which each person represented one family. Later, in accordance with the representative quota previously determined for each cluster, and at a certain stage in the survey, only those were left on the list whom it was proposed to interview. The people excluded from the lists served as a reserve for replacing missing informants. Then individual address cards were completed which were distributed to the interviewers for their work. To facilitate control the serial number of a person on the list was recorded on his address card and questionnaire. On the first day of work in the field the interviewers were divided up into pairs. Later (in towns) we abandoned this procedure because it did not stimulate individual responsibility. Each interviewer was given an address card. If the person concerned was absent, the card was returned to the leader of the team and exchanged for another one (from the reserve). Filled-in questionnaires were immediately checked by the team leader and subjected to logical and quality control. Only after they had been checked and the necessary corrections made were the questionnaires considered completed. The work showed that it was best to distribute all the address cards for a given settlement on the first day. That enabled the team to establish the presence of all informants and, if anyone was absent or not available, to explain the reason and the period of absence and decide whether to substitute someone else for his or her 'portrait'. Cards were distributed in accordance with the interviewer's mastery of Udmurt and the informants' knowledge of Russian. Persons of the older generation who had little or no Russian were questioned as a rule by Udmurts. V. Such were the programmatic, methodological, organizational, and

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procedural principles and techniques employed in the course of the ethnographic survey of Udmurts. It is too early yet to speak of the results as the data are still being processed at the time of writing. Certain conclusions, however, can already be drawn, three of which are the most essential. First, we succeeded in experimentally testing the feasibility of organizing and carrying out a sufficiently extensive survey in strict accordance with the rules and requirements dictated by statistical procedures, utilizing an extremely thorough questionnaire, and employing a large number of volunteer interviewers. Second, from the results of the fieldwork, we are convinced of the usefulness of the forms and procedures employed. The questionnaire, as explained, required only slight editing and technical correction. Third, preliminary analysis of the data obtained permits us to consider them adequate in quantity and good in quality. As a result of the survey we have obtained an abundance of ethnographic information on a whole people. Table 2. Control Matrix for Classification of Families Families of Two Generations Families of One Generation consisting of one two person persons

Younger Generation consisting of

three or more one persons person

Older Generation consisting of

three two or more one persons persons person

two persons

three or more persons

F F M

F M M

F (youngest)

Families of Three Generations Younger Generation consisting of one two person persons

Middle Generation consisting of

three or more one persons person

Oldest Generation consisting of

three two or more one two persons persons person persons

three or more persons

Social Organization

Early Forms of Family and Marriage in the Light of Soviet Ethnography

A. PERSHITS

The outstanding U.S. ethnographer, Lewis H. Morgan, proposed the first scientific periodization in the development of the forms of marriage and the family. The conceptual part of this periodization has largely remained meaningful even today. Before going on to deal with these problems in Soviet ethnography, let us take a brief look at Morgan's basic propositions. Morgan, opposing the assertions prevalent in his day about the individual family being an everlasting form, proposed that relations in marriage and the family evolved through a succession of historical forms. He singled out five forms which had successively developed from the primordial sexual promiscuity: the consanguine group family barring persons of different generations from marital intercourse; the punaluan group family, additionally excluding brothers and sisters from such intercourse ; the pairing family; the patriarchal family; and finally, the monogamous family of class society which emerged with the development of private property. Morgan drew up this scheme of the development of the family and marriage on the basis of the ethnographic material available at the time, the most important of which was information about the systems of kinship terminologies reflecting, as Morgan was the first to show, preceding forms of family and marital relations. In particular, the consanguine and the punaluan families were reconstructed through an analysis of the classificatory systems of kinship terminologies, among which Morgan brought out two successive stages, the so-called Hawaiian or Malayan First published in Voprosy istorii, N2 (1967).

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and the Turano-Ganowanian. In both these systems the kinship nomenclature, and consequently also the marital and familial relations on which they rest are of a group (classifying) character, that is, definite groups of persons are at one and the same time in marital relations with each other. The Malayan system, however, makes a distinction between groups of kinsmen only horizontally by generation, which, Morgan held, corresponds to relations which had existed in the consanguine family, whereas the Turano-Ganowanian system also draws a vertical distinction between the patrilateral and matrilateral kinship, which corresponds to the relations in the punaluan family. The distinction between the patrilateral and matrilateral kinship is evidence of the emergence of the clan society. The existence of the punaluan and the pairing family has been proved not only by an analysis of the systems of kinship terminologies, but also by the direct ethnographic data on the marital customs of some peoples of the world which Morgan had at his disposal. According to the reports of missionaries, the Hawaiians, which were at one time considered to be among the most backward peoples, still retained the punaluan family founded upon group marriage of several sisters including the first, second, and more remote female cousins, to each other's husbands or of several brothers including the first, second, and more remote male cousins to each other's wives. There were also numerous data (mainly relating to the Indians of North America) on the pairing family, which enabled Morgan to characterize it as deprived of internal economic bonds, an unstable social form under which relations between the spouses were broadly combined with survivals of group marriage. This coherent and logical periodization in the development of the family and marriage, based on solid factual material and at the same time aimed against the reactionary idea that the individual family of class society had existed from time immemorial, was in the main accepted by Friedrich Engels. Engels, however, has not overestimated certain parts of Morgan's theory but has repeatedly stressed that the various specific conclusions he had drawn depended on the accumulation of new ethnographic facts. Thus, in the first edition of his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels accepted Morgan's idea that the consanguine family had been a necessary stage in the development of family and marital relations. In the fourth edition, which appeared after the publication of L. Fyson's and A. Howitt's studies of Australian aborigines, he accepted in principle that in Australia the dualphratral group marriage, i.e., the state of mutual matrimony between two phratries, could have emerged directly from primordial promiscuity.

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At the same time, Engels came out resolutely against the view of the punaluan family as a necessary stage in the development of family and marriage (Vinnikov, 1936). Engels warned that Morgan's general periodization of primitive history would remain in force only "unless important additional material necessitates alterations" (Marx and Engels, 1970 : 204). Soon new data were obtained which cast doubt on the historical reality of some of the familial and marital forms suggested by Morgan. The studies begun by W. Rivers, G. Frazer, and L. Sternberg, and continued by Soviet scientists S. Tokarev, A. Zolotaryov, and D. Olderogge showed that Morgan was wrong in his view of the place occupied in history by the Malayan system of kinship terminologies which he took as the basis for reconstructing the consanguine family. It turned out that the merger of the patrilateral and matrilateral line of kinship, characteristic of this system, was not a reflection of the earliest (preclan) state of marital and family relations but, on the contrary, a relatively later simplification of the Turano-Ganowanian system, resulting from the disintegration of the clan society. In other words, the Malayan system was not older but younger than the Turano-Ganowanian system of kinship terminologies (Tokarev, 1929; Zolotarev 1940, 1964; Olderogge, 1951). Morgan was wrong on yet another point: studies carried out by ethnographers specializing in Oceania, including the Soviet ethnographer D. Tumarkin, established that reports of punaluan marriage had been an invention of the missionaries who had either honestly erred or had tried to present the pagans of Hawaii as immoral savages. In effect, by the time the Hawaiian Islands were colonized, the state had already been taking shape and pairing marriage combined with polygyny (and rarely with polyandry) in the high life was developing into monogamy (Tumarkin, 1954). Thus, the punaluan family turned out to be not merely an exception to the rule but a figment of the imagination. Finally, studies carried out by foreign and Soviet students have shown that because Morgan had limited factual material, he had failed to devote sufficient attention to the connection between the initial forms of familial and marital relations and the dual organization. All of this quite naturally required that Morgan's scheme should be given greater precision. In Soviet science the work on these problems is still far from complete. Views concerning the development of the primitive family differ; for one thing, there is no consensus about the initial forms of regulation of marital and familial relations. Some Soviet specialists in the history of primitive society, while accepting the modern

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view of the Malayan system of kinship terminologies, believe that this system was not the only basis for the reconstruction of the consanguine family. Thus Olderogge who did much to bring out the later origin of the Malayan system, found it necessary to add the reservation that the latter constituted no more than partial evidence of the existence of the consanguine family (Olderogge, 1951: 31-32). M. Kosven (1957 : 25) and P. Boriskovskij (1957 : 139-40) have made more definite statements on this score, and referred to Engels* remark that it is not only the Malayan system of kinship terminologies, but all the subsequent development of the family, implying the existence of this form as a necessary initial stage, which provides evidence in favor of the existence of the consanguine family. The reference to Engels on this point, however, is hardly justified. We have already seen that the facts dating from the 1870's and 1880's, which had made it possible to place the stage of the punaluan family in the development of familial and marital relations, can now no longer be taken into the account. Moreover, as A. Zolotarev has shown, the hypothesis of the consanguine family clashes with the marriages, widespread among some backward peoples, between representatives of different generations, including father and daughter (Zolotarev 1940 : 157). In one of his works, Kosven himself drew attention to similar marriages mainly between uncles and nieces or nephews and aunts (Kosven, 1946). It is true that in the recent period attention has been drawn to the fact that because of the short span of life among paleolithic peoples (Vallois has estimated that most women died under the age of thirty years) the shared period of life of successive generations was short, and this could have resulted in the actual impossibility and later in a prohibition of this kind of marriage (Vallois, 1961; Semenov, 1963; Boriskovskij, 1970). The consanguine family implies the exclusion from the marital circle not only of mothers but also fathers; this is not borne out either by palaeodemographic calculations, or, as we have seen, by ethnographic data. Consequently, at the present time there appear to be no factual or logical arguments in favor of reconstruction of the consanguine family. On the strength of this, most Soviet researchers believe that the exogamous dual-clan group marriage was the first historical form of social regulation of relations between the sexes which developed directly from the primordial promiscuity. In other words it is assumed that the earliest form of marriage included: first, prohibition of marriage with clan members; second, the intermarriage age of two specified clans; third, the marital community of members of both clans (Zolotarev, 1940; Tokarev, 1946; Tolstov, 1947a; Semenov, 1966b).

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The mechanism behind the emergence of exogamy is one of the most complex problems of ethnography. Let us recall that Morgan explained its appearance by the urge to avoid the biologically injurious consequences of incest. This explanation was already partially corrected by Engels who observed that such an urge could have been no more than spontaneous without clear consciousness of purpose (Marx and Engels, 1970 : 223). The latest data makes it possible to draw the conclusion that, given sufficiently large biological populations, the idea of incestuous marriages being injurious was doubtful. What is more, in primitive society such forms of relatives-marriage, as cross-cousin marriages (with the daughter of the mother's brother or with the daughter of the father's sister), had not been merely allowed but had even been prescriptive. Another fact that had been brought out was that primitive men, like the Australians, the Trobrianders or the Avuna, may not have been aware of the connection between copulation and conception. Most Soviet scientists have now abandoned the purely biological theory of the origin of exogamy and seek to find an intrinsic connection between this form of regulation of marital relations and the general course of the regulation of productive activity in the primitive human horde. The view advanced by Taylor and Levi-Strauss has been fairly widely accepted — that exogamy was designed to fix the economic or social bonds between neighboring collectives (Zolotarev, 1931; Olderogge, 1947; Tokarev, 1968a). Another hypothesis was put forward by S. Tolstov (basing himself on some propositions expressed by A. Crowley, M. Kovalevsky, and M. Zhakov, 1933) among Soviet scientists; he linked the appearance of exogamous taboos with the regulation of internal economic life of the early primitive collectives. According to this hypothesis, sexual relations not being socially regulated must have been accompanied by ceaseless clashes on grounds of jealousy, thereby undermining the human horde as a production cell. In combating this, mankind gradually introduced various taboos which increasingly limited, and ultimately made altogether impossible, sexual intercourse within one's group. The result was exogamy, and at the same time the duty organization in the form of a combination of two exogamous clans into a single marital connubium (Tolstov, 1935a). This view is accepted by A. Zolotarev in his latest work (Zolotarev, 1964), and in the recent period by Yu. Semenov who has sought to trace the origin of the dual (dual-horde) exogamy at the latest stages of the existence of the primitive human horde (Semenov, 1966a). There has also been inadequate study of the mechanism behind the emergence of the dual organization. The question of how the dual

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A. PERSHTTS

structure of early clan society arose — was it through the division of one collective or through the merger of two isolated groups — is now being essentially considered arbitrarily. This question may subsequently be answered when considerable palaeoanthropological data are at hand about the mutability of local groups of earliest mankind. Nonetheless, the fact that the dual organization had existed as a primary form in the regulation of marital relations is generally accepted. The survival of the dual organization or its echoes in the clan, tribal or political structure, mythology or religion, has been recorded among most peoples of the world (Tolstov, 1948; Zolotarev, 1939; Pershits, 1956). It is true that alongside this, another ancient form of interclan mutual marriage — the asymmetric connubium (Olderogge, 1946 a; b) — has been discovered, but it was less widespread and must have appeared later. The group character of early marital relations is reconstructed, on the one hand, on the strength of the above-mentioned features of the Turano-Ganowanian system of kinship terminologies, and on the other — and this is especially important — through an analysis of some remaining survivals. Such, for instance, are the marriage classes of the Australian aborigines and the piraungaru-type customs discovered among some Australian tribes, where both men and women had, in addition to their "principal" wives or husbands, several "additional" ones. Such, too, are the diverse survivals of freedom of extramarital sexual intercourse, evidence of which has been found in historical and ethnographic material among many backward, and now and again, even among fairly developed peoples of the world. Some of these materials were already used by Bachofen and Morgan or by the followers of the latter, while others are reflected in the works of numerous foreign and Soviet students. Nevertheless, there are many controversial issues here, too; of primary importance is the problem of localizing the marital residence of the spouses. The conception of the exogamous group marriage inevitably had to pose the question of where the marital intercourse of the spouses was actually realized. Ethnographic data allow two answers to this question: unilocal (joint) and dislocal (separate) marital residence. In the first instance, under the practice of matrilocal residence (that is, settlement with the women), the group husbands had to resettle to their group wives; under the practice of patrilocal residence, which succeeded the former, the wives had to resettle to their husbands. We find survivals of this unilocal group marriage in its patrilocal variant, for instance, among the Arabana of Australia and the Semangs of Malacca. In the latter instance, as W. Schmidt and W. Koppers and the Soviet researcher

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Kosven (Schmidt and Koppers, 1924; Kosven, 1932) suggested, both groups of spouses had to remain in their clan collectives, undertaking sexual intercourse only during short nocturnal visits or even outside the boundaries of the settlements, for instance, in the forest. The hypothesis of the dislocal character of group marriage is confirmed not only by numerous folklore subjects but also by the marital customs of some peoples, including relatively primitive ones like some Papuan tribes of New Guinea. Evidence in favor of this hypothesis also seems to come from the widespread custom of the dislocal settlement of the spouses until the birth of their first child. This hypothesis has been supported by various other Soviet researchers (Tolstov 1935b; Zolotarev, ms, b) and was given its logical completion in Semyonov's proposition that group marriage should be considered as a socially regulated relationship between collectives, but not between individual men and women (Semeno v, 1964). Yet, we cannot consider this to have been proved. A special problem which, let me say, has also not been adequately studied, is about the reasons for the transition from group marriage to pairing marriage. Those who favor the biological explanation of exogamy connect the emergence of pairing marriage with the further gradual taboo on marriages between relatives, which steadily narrowed down the circle of marital partners and ultimately made group marriage impossible (Nikolskij, 1950). According to another view expressed in Soviet writings, the transition to the pairing family took place when, with the emergence of the surplus product and the incipient disintegration of primitive communism, the first family cells, initially on a consumer and then on a production basis, began to emerge within the clan collectives (Semenov, 1965a). Finally, there is another answer which logically flows from Tolstov's proposal to explain the emergence of exogamy in terms of production: dual exogamy had carried marital relations beyond the boundaries of the clan but necessarily left a room for rivalry between group husbands or wives. Thus, the new bans continued to narrow down the circle of group spouses, as a result of which pairing marriage took shape through some intermediate but not necessarily similar forms. Soviet ethnographers have devoted more attention to the subsequent forms of familial-marital organization — the extended and monogamous family. It was Kosven who did most in this sphere. He believes that the extended family appeared as early as the epoch of the developed matriarchate in the form of the so-called maternal extended family, which constitutes a group of the nearest kinsmen living and keeping house together, a group which is differentiated within the matri-clan. The Iroquoian ovachira is the best example of such a cell. Subsequently,

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A. PERSHITS

with the disintegration of the matri-clan system, this family gives way to the patriarchal extended family of the "democratic" type, and the latter, as private property develops, either becomes a late ("despotic" or "paternal") extended family, or gives way to the small family organization (Kosven, 1940,1963). Kosven's scheme for the development of the extended family has been broadly but not generally accepted. Many ethnographers, on good grounds, have pointed to the fact that the maternal family, insofar as it did not include affines, cannot be regarded as a form of family organization, so that it is impossible to speak about the prepatriarchal forms of the extended family. In the recent period, a substantial specification in the periodization of the extended family was introduced by Yu. Bromley who showed that the patriarchal forms of the extended family were preceded not by a maternal but by a fraternal family community (Bromley, 1968c). However great the difference between views concerning the existence of the consanguine family, the origins of exogamy, the reasons for the transition to pairing marriage, and the period in which the extended family organization originated, all the Soviet researchers mentioned above are working to elaborate the problem of the evolution in the early forms of the family and marriage from standpoints that are close to each other in principle. They assume that present-day ethnographical data make it possible to bring substantial precision to the various theses set out by Morgan, and fully confirm his proposition that the group, collective forms of familial, and marital relations inevitably preceded the pairing and subsequent forms of the family. There is, however, another view which is quite new in our historical science and, for that reason alone, calls for special attention. As I have said, the group forms of family and marriage are a historical reconstruction based on the study and scientific interpretation of various survival phenomena. When living familial and marital institutions are directly observed, even among the most backward peoples of the world, like the Australian aborigines, the Aeta, the Semangs, the forest Vedda, the Bushmen, the peoples of Tierra del Fuego, and so on, it is the prevalence of the pairing and not of the group family that is discovered. Now and again, especially when marriage is unilocal, some kind of internal economic bonds have already emerged in such a family. On the strength of these facts, many ethnographers abroad continue to hold the view that the individual family has been there from time immemorial. In particular, much factual material designed to confirm this idea, and so to refute the idea of the historical development of familial forms, has been generalized in the works of prominent bourgeois ethnographers,

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including E. Westermarck, B. Malinowski, P. Lowie, G. Murdock, and others. Until recently, the material these researchers used was either ignored in our writings or declared to be false. What is false is not the facts themselves but their interpretation and the theoretical constructions based on them; they make no distinction between two fundamentally distinct types of family — the pairing and the monogamous family. In this context, some interest is attached to the views expressed by Soviet ethnographers N. Butinov and V. Kabo. On the strength of the ethnography of the Australians and the Papuans of New Guinea, they, too, refuse to reconstruct the group forms of family and marriage, and begin the history of familial and marital relations with the living forms they have directly observed. According to Butinov, the pairing family was already in existence in the primitive human horde and produced an acute antagonism between the horde and the family. Gaining independence from time to time, the family hampered the cohesion of the collective. In order to ease this contradiction, there arose the custom of exogamy which produced some alienation between the spouses and so weakened the family. In this weakened state, the pairing family passed from the stage of the primitive human horde to the stage of the communal-clan system: it had had definite economic functions but was merely the lowest economic cell within the basic economic collective, the clan community. This kind of family, Butinov says, in considering the family organization of the Papuans, is incapable of carrying on economic operations on its own; the husband and the wife own their property separately, they cannot inherit from each other, they belong to different clans, and even frequently live in different huts — the husband in the male house, with other adult men of the clan community, and the wife in the family hut with the minor children (Butinov, 1962, 1968; Kabo, 1968). This view does not appear to be convincing because it is based only on information relating to the pairing family, and completely ignores the sum total of the data on the group forms of family and marriage. The deliberate refusal to consider all the facts known to science, interconnection, and historical succession inevitably leads to one-sided and flimsy conclusions. In another sense, the idea expressed by Butinov and Kabo is indicative. It shows that if we take only the observations on which the above-mentioned bourgeois ethnographers had based themselves, and, in contrast to them, if we take an unbiased view of these facts, little ground will be left for the assertions that the individual family has always been there as the basic economic cell of society. It is this that constitutes the conceptual nucleus of the doctrine of the develop-

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ment of familial and marital relations developed by Morgan and Engels. The problem of the evolution of familial and marital relations is not only of importance as an element of one's world outlook; it is also of great cognitive importance. In the recent period, its elaboration in Soviet ethnographical writings has been invigorated and, what is especially important, this is being done on a common methodological basis from different research angles. The possibility for extensive polemics is thus created and should help to clarify our ideas about the development of familial and marital forms.

"Military Democracy' and the Epoch of Class Formation

A. KHAZANOV

It is well known that many institutions of early class society did not newly arise but had their roots in the preceding epoch of disintegration of primitive society. With the split of society into classes these institutions appear to us in a markedly transformed shape adapted to the conditions of class existence. The various forms of political organization, which gradually and covertly take shape in the entrails of a primitive society approaching destruction, do not constitute any exception. The exact forms of this shaping political organization, the extent to which they are antithetical to society in which class contradictions have not yet reached the level entailing the emergence of the state in the proper sense of the word, and finally the very mechanism of their development remain little investigated and debatable. As a result, the existence of many institutions which have the character essentially of pre-state institutions is now and again taken as evidence of the existence of the state in this or that society. This, for its part, leads to an artificial merger of two qualitatively distinct epochs in mankind's history — the epoch of class formation, and the early class epoch. In this way, the dialectically intricate process of emergence of the state is now and again oversimplified with the state itself acquiring some supra-class features (because the society where it is said to exist still lacks antagonistic classes). At the same time, precisely in consequence of an inadequate distinction between the concept of "the epoch of class formation" and "the stage of early class society", we occasionally find the reserve approach, so that the society in- which antagonistic classes have already appeared is presented First published in Voprosy istorii, Ml 2 (1968).

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as a preclass society at the stage of its disintegration. In this context, special importance attaches to the meaning of the MILITARY DEMOCRACY concept (Morgan, 1877: 132, 193, 221, 256, 259, 272, 288, 317, 325), which Lewis H. Morgan first brought out, and to its place in mankind's history, a question that Soviet ethnographers and historians have already repeatedly dealt with. Morgan himself failed to give a clear-cut definition of his military democracy, but laid emphasis on two of its features: the military state of society, and the system of administration consisting of an elective and removable supreme chief, a council of elders and a popular assembly. Attention was particularly drawn to the democratic character of this system which left the decisive say to the free people. Morgan saw military democracy not so much as a definite stage in the development of human society but rather as a specific form of its organization and administration. In one of his early works, S. Tolstov expressed the view that military democracy was a special period of transition from preclass to class society: "The society of the epoch of military democracy is both preclass and class — to be more precise, it is simultaneously a slave-holding society" (Tolstov, 1935a: 206). Subsequently, Tolstov virtually abandoned this view and defined military democracy as the final stage of primitive society (Tolstov, 1946). This view is shared by other ethnographers (Pershits, 1953; Kosven, 1957 :220; 1960 : 250). In a recent article, Yu. Semenov once again expressed the idea that military democracy corresponds to a specific transition stage in the transformation of clan society into class society (Semenov, 1965a: 79, 80, 93). In the recent period, the military democracy concept has been criticized by some Soviet and foreign historians. In its place, they have suggested the "Asian mode of production", a concept which in this case means either a special period of transition from the classless to the class society, or the final stage in the history of primitive society (Suret-Canale, 1965: 101-2; Godelier, 1965 : 102-4; Berzin, Vitkin, Andrejev, 1966). The substance of this criticism, however, does not consist of any new periodization of primitive history — there is nothing new in this or in a simple substitution of one term for another — but in a different view of the essence of the stage being defined. Below I shall consider this in greater detail, but at this point I should like to observe that some ethnographers have already pointed out that the term introduced by Morgan was unsatisfactory and inadequate for the content of the epoch it defined (Potekhin, 1951 : 235-36; Kosven, 1960 : 245). I shall have to confine myself to the briefest possible historiographical review of some of the debatable matters connected with

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the "military democracy" concept so as to go on to a consideration of the problem itself. Over ninety years have passed since the publication of Morgan's book, a period in which ethnography, history, and archaeology have amassed vast quantities of new data on the concluding stages of primitive society and the emergence of the state. Many of these data are at variance with those science had at its disposal in the second half of the 19th century. Morgan's view was necessarily restricted by the data bearing on Ancient Greece and Rome, two instances that he used to trace the direct transformation of the organs of administration in disintegrating primitive society into state organs. He failed to understand and did not give full due to the extent to which Aztec society developed. Our present-day knowledge of the subject is much fuller. Oceania and Africa have been yielding much new and fundamentally important material. Some success has been achieved in the study of the early state formations on the American continent. New information has been obtained on the emergence of the world's most ancient states in the East, although there are many points still controversial and obscure. There is a lively discussion of the specific emergence of the state in nomad societies. At the same time many problems of the early history of Greece and Italy now appear in a different light. All this has made it possible to take a fresh look at some of the questions bearing on the final period in the history of primitive society and the emergence of the state. Morgan correctly remarked on the role of the military factor in the life of the societies he classified as military democracies. He was also right about the influence this factor had on their social institutions, but I think he overestimated the democratic character of these societies. This happened primarily because Morgan was able to trace the substitution of tribal society by "political" society, that is, the emergence of the state only, as I have said, on the strength of data bearing on Athens and Rome. The regularity he derived on the strength of this limited material, expressed in a gradual transformation of fundamentally democratic clan institutions into state institutions, was presented as a universal one. Considering the institutions of Athens and Rome before the emergence of the state there through the prism of the Iroquois clan, Morgan saw them as being a direct continuation and development of the social system which lay at the basis of the Iroquois confederation. Behind these features of outward similarity he failed to discern the fundamental distinctions separating the Greek genos and the Roman gens from the Iroquois clan. It is impossible to see the Athenian state as arising directly from tribal

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institutions. The earliest states on the territory of Greece — the Achaean kingdoms — appeared not later than the 16th century B.C. (Blavatskaja, 1966 : 66), and their existence left a strong imprint on the subsequent historical development of Greece, not excluding Athens itself which had existed in Achaean times as well (Biegen, 1940 : 1-9). The discovery of the Achaean kingdoms complicated the question of the period to which Homer's epos belonged, but it was the latter on which scientists from Morgan to Kosven based their description of the military democracy of the Greeks. Today, more and more researchers seem to accept the view that this epos had taken shape in Achaean times, that is, somewhere between the 16th and the 13th centuries B.c.; the fall of Troy, which is now dated at 1260 B.C. (Biegen, 1963 : 163), gave an impetus not to the production of the epic tale but to its final formulation (Nilsson, 1932:11-34; 1933; Blavatskaja, 1966:7-14). The Basileus was, after all, a king, if not in Homer's poems, at any rate in actual reality. In the Iliad and the Odyssey socioeconomic relations were presented as considerably more archaic and idealized as is generally characteristic of epic tales. It is just as dangerous to be directly guided by them in reconstructing Greek society as it is to try to restore the social system of the peoples concerned on the basis of Popol-Wuch, Nartes and the Nibelungs, or the bylinas of the Vladimirian cycle. As for Attica, in the epoch examined by Morgan its social system cannot be called military-demociatic. On the contrary, it was the scene of a long and bitter struggle for democracy, already characteristic of the slave-holding polis, a struggle in which the broad masses of free people were confronted by the eupatrids, who used the survivals of tribal institutions to safeguard their own privileges. We find a similar picture in Rome. Archaeological evidence on the disintegration of the primitive communal system in Italy dates it from the end of the second and early first millenium B.C. R. Gunter writes: "The first settlers on the hills already lived, as the spade shows, in conditions of a relatively developed social differentiation. In the period when the names we now know of the Curiae and the three most ancient gens had been determined, these were not harmoniously developed clan institutions, but already bore the mark of state formation." The state in Rome arose in the regal period, not later than the 6th century B.C., which, like the shaping of some political institutions, was strongly promoted by Etruscan influence (at one time Rome was ruled by the Etruscan Tarquinian dynasty) (Günter, 1959 : 79-82; Yelnitskij, 1958 : 143; Nemirovskij, 1962 : 212, 239; Gjerstad, 1963 : 44; Grenier, 1912 : 78; Ryberg, 1940 : 5). Thus, the early political structures in Rome were already of a state character

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even if a highly primitive one, and are burdened with considerable survivals of earlier, prestate relations. As in Greece, these survivals suited the patricians, the descendants of the gens aristocracy, and can be traced in Rome almost back to the Punic Wars. The centuriate reform, which, according to Morgan, inaugurates the Roman state, now turns out to date from a period not earlier than 443 B.C. (Nemirovskij, 1959 : 162). Both in Rome and Greece at the dawn of their authentic history we find a much greater social and proprietary differentiation of society than Morgan had realized. The organs of power which he had held to be clans, appear to us from the outset in a strongly modified form adapted to conditions of a state existence however primitive, and expressing for the most part the eupatrids and the patricians. The descendants of the aristocratic clans contrasted themselves with the strata of the free part of the population which had fewer rights, and fought to retain their privileges. The term democracy, even if it is a military one, is hardly adequate to such a state of society. Turning to the history of other countries and peoples, we find a considerable diversity of social institutions in the various societies at the final stage of the primitive society undergoing transition to the state. For the most part, these institutions do not fit into the procrustean bed of the triad characteristic of the military democracy: the supreme chief, the council of elders, the popular assembly — nor is this at all surprising. Although the emergence of the state is everywhere determined by the same regularities, in each concrete instance this process is influenced by an aggregation of different factors. The level of development of the productive forces, the forms of the economy, the role of exchange, the extent of disintegration of tribal institutions, the character of external relations, etc., has an influence on the forms of the emergent political structures of society, which can far from always be characterized as military democracy. In this context, considerable interest is attached to the Polynesian society, which on the eve of the colonial period (19th century) was at the stage of the disintegration of the primitive society and the emergence of the state, although on some of the islands and archipelagoes the process ran an uneven course (Narody, 1956a; Tokarev, 1958c; Williamson, 1924; Best, 1924; Hogbin, 1934 : 235-60; Sahlins, 1958). In Polynesia the extended family was the main cell of society, and affinity gave way to territorial ties. Exchange did not develop to any great extent, but the handicrafts, already separated from agriculture, were considerably developed. The importance of slavery was on the whole not great. In these conditions, a special part fell to social differentiations which largely

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determined proprietary distinctions within society. The main characteristics of Polynesia were undeviating practice of the genealogical principle of seniority, the separation of the nobility, and the tendency to the formation of closed hereditary caste groups. So even before the emergence of the state a sharp social stratification had occurred and the bulk of the still free members of the society had been barred from the administration of social affairs. It is true that all the adult members of the commune were entitled to attend the communal councils — the/o/zo of Samoa and Tonga — and even take part in discussing affairs, but for all practical purposes things were discussed by the heads of the extended families, and the decisions were taken by a handful of the senior chiefs. In fact, only the chiefs took part in the councils which brought together several neighboring villages. Even among the Maoris of New Zealand who were at a relatively lower stage of social development in comparison with Tahiti and Tonga, the tribal chiefs were restricted in their action by a council of elders representing the individual hapu (groups of kindred families), but never by ordinary, free members of the communes. Administration of the larger territorial and tribal associations rested on a hierarchy of chiefs belonging to the same estate of the nobility — alii (arikf). We find nothing resembling a popular assembly in Polynesia. It is therefore not at all accidental that, although all Soviet researchers are unanimous in their evaluation of the level of development attained by Polynesian society, none of them uses the term military democracy to describe it. Otherwise, the facts would clearly stand as incongruous. We find something similar in Africa, which reveals a diversity of forms of social administration in the transition period. Alongside the military-democratic forms (among the Fulbe, Azande, and Southern Bantu) there existed other forms based on greater social differentiation. In the Indenie "kingdom" (Ivory Coast) a whole superstructure of variously ranking chiefs headed by a supreme chief rose over the democratically ruled communes in which the extended families were banded. No trace of any popular assemblies can be found above the level of one village (Suret-Canale, 1958 : 91). The Mandingo-speaking Africans had popular assemblies only on the level of the settlement or district, but these were rather of a gerontocratic character and consisted only of the chiefs of extended families (Labouret, 1934 : 46). Among the Bemba in North-Eastern Zambia, although each man was armed, there were no regular detachments and no trace of any popular assembly; nonetheless, there was clear evidence of a ruling elite consisting of representatives of the supreme "crocodile clan". A council of elders merely was in charge of

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religious affairs and considered disputes over the succession to the throne (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, 1940 : 85-112). The available material gives ground to assume that the formation of classes frequently ran through the formation of hierarchic caste groups which emerged and were considerably developed as early as the final stage of primitive society. The emergence of such groups could be promoted by conquests which transformed ethnical distinctions into caste and then into class distinctions (as in fact happened in the Mbau "kingdom" in Fiji, and in Ruanda, Urundi, and other countries of tropical Africa). An example of this type of development is offered by the social organization of the Lan Shan group of the Yih people in China where the whole of society was divided into a number of hereditary endogamic stratas, the boundaries between which were highly clear-cut, and absolutely insurmountable between the highest stratum, Nosu, and the rest which it maintained in semi-feudal bondage. Let us add, however, that among the Yih the state never in fact took shape, and the social system of the Nosu closely resembled the form characteristic of military democracy with the difference, however, that it was a democracy for 7 per cent of the population (Its, 1964; Its, Yakovlev, 1967). Castes and strata could also emerge without conquest within primitive society itself as it was disintegrating. These emerge on the basis of the emergent hierarchy of clans, communes and extended families, compounded by the social division of labor and the emergence of professional castes.1 What this led to is clearly seen from the example of the Micronesians of the Marianna and Marshall Islands, who had, alongside their matrilineal clans, sharp hierarchical distinctions within society. Representatives of the noble clans, which had been converted into endogamic castes, monopolized the right to the land and to the administration of society. Subsequent social stratification led to the emergence of different social groups enjoying various rights even within the dominant aristocratic caste (Thompson, 1945:11-20; Erdland, 1914:99-114). Similar phenomena will be found among some mountain peoples of Assam. From the existing hierarchy of clans among the Lushu and the Konyak Naga, one tribe developed which monopolized all the senior offices and became an endogamic caste gradually taking shape as a feudal 1

The tendency to form these closed stratas existed both in Athens and in Rome, and its vehicles were representatives of "noble" clans, the eupatrids and the patricians. Eventually another tendency became uppermost there: the establishment of a single class of slave-holders, in contrast to Sparta where the early class society assumed the form of a clearly expressed caste character.

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class. Around the chiefs there took shape a peculiar aristocracy which marked the division of society into estates (Maretina, 1967). How the ruling clan or extended family could grow in these conditions will be seen from the example of Dahomey where the royal house numbered 12,000 persons. It is hardly possible to speak here about a military democracy because most free members of the society were removed from administration before the hierarchic caste distinctions assumed a class character and the state itself emerged. I have sought to show that the disintegration of the primitive society did not necessarily lead to the establishment of a military democracy and that there were other ways based on greater social differentiation. There is yet another aspect to this question of military democracy. Can it be assumed that military democracy as a stadial concept corresponded to the whole epoch of transition from primitive society to class society, at least among the peoples where we in fact find it in existence? Above I remarked on the difficulties which the researcher into the early history of Greece and Rome inevitably faces when taking such a view of military democracy — on the one hand, the level of social differentiation in preSolonic Athens, as in Rome of the early royal period, clashes with the idea of the people being free under a military democracy; on the other hand, no more than an intensive process of class formation, but never the existence of fully fledged classes, can be assumed. As a corollary of this, state power both in Greece and in Rome in the specified period was embryonic, and it is precisely the initial stages of class formation in Athens and in Rome that are most obscure. There is much more material on a similar period among the ancient Germans, where it is quite obvious that military democracy did not immediately precede the emergence of the state. The military democracy epoch among the ancient Germans as a whole ranges over the period from the 1st century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. The royal power emerging in the period from the 1st century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. was elective and unstable, and for the time expressed the interests of the tribe as a whole, and not only of the tribal nobility (Neusykhin, 1929; 1967 : 79). In the 3rd and the 4th centuries when the military alliances of the German tribes occupied definite territories, more or less stable formations arose with a more complex social and political structure. At the end of the 5th and during the 6th and 7th centuries the states were formed which were usually called "barbarian", though not long ago they were characterized as early feudal states (Vsemirnaja, 1957 : 140-41,189, 204). Today, more students incline to the idea that these were not yet states in the full sense of the word because they were not the product of a

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division of society into antagonistic classes but constituted a form of social organization at the stage of transition from a preclass to a class structure (Neusykhin, 1956 : 31; 1967 : 81; Korsunskij, 1963 : 20, 16062; Gurevich, 1967 : 12-23). In these societies there was already a pronounced tendency towards the transformation of social distinctions into class contradictions; however, as Neusykhin observed, "this social system, being a communal one without being primitive, and simultaneously including within itself elements of social inequality, was not yet a feudal class society, even in the sense in which very early feudalism itself was such". A term introduced into scientific usage is the stadial concept of the "prefeudal period", which, in Neusykhm's opinion, begins with the disintegration of the tribal system (Neusykhin, 1956 : 76, 82), in application to the Germans of the early centuries of our own era, and lasts until the formation of the basic classes of the feudal society and the emergence of the state as an expression of the interests of the ruling class. Consequently, the "prefeudal period" is regarded as a transitional one between two social formations — the preclass and class formations — while military democracy corresponds only to its beginning. Similar views were developed even earlier by B. Grekov on the strength of his study of the history of the Slavs. He dated the epoch of military democracy among the Eastern Slavs to the period from the 4th to the 6th centuries, and regarded the period from the 6th to the 8th centuries as a transitional one from the primitive society at the final stage of its development to class society, from the military democracy to the early feudal state (Grekov, 1953 : 533; 1948 : 94). On the whole, such conclusions appear to be highly convincing. In the period of transition from the primitive system to the class system political structures with a tendency to set themselves above society could arise. These would not yet be in final contrast to society because of the embryonic social contradictions and the incompleteness of the process of the class formation, and therefore they would not yet be states in the true sense of the word. This accords well with the information we have about the emergence of classes and the state among many peoples. Not long ago, L. Kubbel stated that there are no grounds for classifying the Ghana of the 8th-llth centuries as belonging to the first few nearly class states in Western Africa, as had been done till recently. In that period Ghana had not yet crossed the line separating primitive society from class society: there was no exploitation of the rank-and-file members of society, slave labor was not used inside the country, and the principal means of production were still not concentrated in the hands of a minority. The embryonic forms of statehood arose there largely under the

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influence of the needs of the trans-Sahara trade, which hastened the disintegration of tribal relations. Kubbel showed Ghana society to be "preclass" and drew a parallel with the "prefeudal society" of early medieval Europe (Kubbel, 1967). Similar "barbarian states" are also to be found in Eastern Africa. There is good reason for the British scientist, A. W. Southall, to compare the "segmentary states" (as he calls the early state formations in Africa) with state formations in Europe in the early Middle Ages. Suret-Canale also wrote about the "embryonic state formations" in Africa, which appeared before the emergence of class antagonism (Southall, 1953 : 235-56; Suret-Canale, 1958 : 104). Present-day researchers into the precolonial history of Latin America note the existence of similar prestate forms among Indians. S. Sozina says that the society of the Chibcha-Muisque (South America) was a "barbarian state" where in the mid-16th century the privileged stratum had not yet developed into a class, although the owners of the means of production had already separated themselves from the mass of ordinary members of the commune (Sozina, 1967). Similar-type structures are also to be found among the Aztecs, although it should be remembered that their development was accelerated and stimulated by the highly developed culture which they found on the Mexican plateau, and by their ceaseless wars of conquest. There is one point in the Aztec tradition, dating to between 1427 and 1430, when as the result of a conflict between the military nobility and the ordinary members of the commune, the popular assembly ceased to exist. This, however, did not make Aztec society a class society. The land was still held by the communes, and the privileges of the nobility had not yet become hereditary (Katz, 1958 : 15-23). The "barbarian state" concept best accords with the form of political organization of Aztec society in that period. The "barbarian state" concept also helps in the study of nomad society, in particular of the ancient nomads. There has been endless controversy over what the Scythian society of the 6th-4th centuries B.C., or the Hun society of the period immediately preceding the enthronement of Mode-shanyui, looked like — was it a military democracy or a fullyfledged state? They cannot be classed as the former because of the existence of a marked social differentiation and a fairly strong central power; they cannot be ranked with the second because there is no noticeable exploitation of ordinary members of society, and the share of slave labor is insignificant. It may well be that the Scythians and the Huns of the said period were going through the completion of the process of class formation. Their society was not yet a class one, but

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political structures with definite state institutions had already appealed (Lashuk, 1967c : 112-13, 114-15). Recent studies make it increasingly clear that despotism was not the initial form of statehood in the countries of the East, as was until quite recently assumed; rather it was preceded by other, more democratic forms of political organization characterized by the existence of a council of nobles and a popular assembly. This is sometimes used as a basis for the conclusion that military democracy had at one time also existed in the East. In no way denying this possibility, I must draw attention to the need to have more specific evidence of this proposition. We find traces in the Ancient East of the existence of institutions typologically similar to military-democratic ones only where the state has already either emerged or was in the final stages of its formation. We have no authentic sources on the epoch preceding this. As we have seen, military democracy is not the only possible form of political organization of society going through the disintegration of primitive communal relations. The formal similarity of social institutions does not tell us much. The posadnik, the boyar council, and the veche of medieval Novgorod outwardly appeared to be similar to the supreme chief, the council of elders, and the popular assembly typical of military democracy. Almost no one will assert on this ground that the Novgorod of the 13th-14th centuries was a military democracy, or that its state institutions directly go back to it. There arises this question: what were the early state formations of the countries of the East? With regard to Mesopotamia, I think I. Djakonov has a strong case when he characterizes the Jemdet-Nasr period as the time of formation of tribal alliances, and the first early dynastic period as the epoch of the shaping of the state in Sumer (Djakonov, 1959: 156). What he calls "nome" states of this period correspond, in stadial terms, to the already described "barbarian states" in other parts of the world, whose emergence marks the moment when the process of class formation in society has already gone far enough to have brought to life some state institutions, but has not yet gone to the extent of splitting society into antagonistic classes. In any comparison it is necessary to reckon with the specific features of ancient Mesopotamia where the requirements of irrigation farming under relatively undeveloped productive forces had to determine an especially early emergence of embryonic state power. The final period in the history of primitive society was much more complex and diverse than that of the 19th century, although it was everywhere given the same content: transition from preclass to class society. As a form of emergent political organization of society, military democracy was not universal; it does not cover the whole period as a stadial

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concept. I think this period is better designated as an "epoch of class formation", which gives a clearer idea of the significance of the transition period. In the broad sense of the word, an epoch of class formation applies to every stage of disintegration of the primitive society from the emergence of a regular surplus product. Since the emergent proprietary inequality and the social differentiation do not at once reach the level at which they grow into class distinctions and contradictions, in the narrow sense of the word it could be taken to mean the epoch in the course of which the classes are shaped. The "prefeudal period" concept appears to be unsatisfactory because it has a negative aspect; the "Asian mode of production" concept appears to be unacceptable as a designation for the period of transition from the preclass to the class society because it is imprecise, regional, and vague. Used in this sense, it artificially brings together two fundamentally distinct epochs: the epoch of class formation and the epoch of early class society. The end of the epoch of class formation marks the emergence of the state. It is much more difficult to determine the beginning of this epoch. Intensive disintegration of the primitive society begins only from the point at which it attains a sufficiently high level in the development of its productive forces. It is the task of the researcher himself to establish this point for each given society, and no general recipes will do here. Semenov is, therefore, hardly right when he suggests that we should consider the emergence of slavery a universal criterion marking the beginning, according to his terminology, of the "epoch of the transformation of clan society into class society" (Semenov, 1965a: 9). The role and significance of the institution of slavery is known to have been dissimilar for the process of class formation in different societies. It is my view that the initial stage of the epoch of class formation should be connected not so much with the emergence of new forms of the emergent political organization of society as with the transformation and modification of the old organs of administration which are of tribal origin, and their adaptation to the more complex social structure. Such, too, is military democracy, one of the existing forms, but not the only form, of administration of society, which on the whole corresponded to the period in which large inter-tribal alliances were established. Military democracy as a form of social administration is contradictory, as is the whole epoch. The supreme chief and the council of elders quite naturally express primarily the interests of the tribal elite, but it would be an oversimplification to assume that they did not also express the interests of the whole of society. Hence, there was a two-fold importance to the plunderous wars and campaigns whose role increased especially at this

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historical stage. The wars helped the tribal elite to increase its power, wealth, and influence, and temporarily ironed out the contradictions within society by carrying them outside and resolving them at the expense of neighbors. While war did constitute an integral factor in the process of class formation, its role in different societies varied with local conditions. Thus in Polynesia it had a smaller part to play than in Western Europe. I should imagine that some of the societies in which war had become a regular function of popular life, and where a majority of the population were drawn into campaigns, conquests and migrations, were those which in fact had passed through a military democracy stage. The ordinary free member of the commune, in possession of weapons and skilled in their use, was not an ideal object for exploitation. For these reasons, military democracy could not be directly transformed into the state. It had to give way to, or rather be transformed into, other political structures more in line with the character of society at the subsequent stage of its development. The gradual substitution of territorial for tribal bonds, the growing proprietary inequality, the spreading social stratification of society, and the emergence of the ruling stratum of the population (partially consisting of descendants of the tribal aristocracy and partially of men rising to positions of importance during the tempestuous events of the initial stage of the epoch of class formation) all led to the emergence of embryonic state formations, "barbarian states". These in the strict sense were "prestates", that is, political structures which already contained some elements of the future statehood, even if in a very undeveloped form.2 In barbarian society the process of class formation was not yet complete, so that contradictions had not yet assumed their antogonistic character: the free commoners continued to constitute the majority which was not exploited to any considerable extent. Thus we designate the final period in the epoch of class formation as a prestate period. It is characterized by the removal of the majority of still free members of society from the administration, the emergence of embryonic, primitive state formations expressing mainly the interests of the social elite acting as a peculiar catalyst in the process of class formation, and promoting its completion. Therein lay their principal function. Only with the division of society into opposite classes did these "prestates" 1

The term "barbarian state" appears to be most apt for designating such political structures because the concept of "barbarians" has been strongly fixed for the peoples which had gone through the epoch of class formation.

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give way to state political structures in the true sense of the word. What is the place of the epoch of class formation in the history of mankind? A great deal depends on one's approach. For the historian of class societies, it may indeed appear to be transitional from preclass to class society because there he first finds the phenomena which are subsequently developed in societies based on exploitation. For the historian of primitive society, this is the final epoch of the primitive communal system because only with the emergence of the state and the appearance of antagonistic classes did primitive society finally cease to exist.

A Description of Systems of Kinship Terminology

Yu. LEVIN

1.

INTRODUCTORY

1.1 As early as 1958 S. A. Tokarev wrote: "It goes without saying that kinship notation systems used by various peoples ... are an invaluable source enabling one to reconstruct diverse early forms of family marital and clan relations. However, the techniques applied in studying kinship nomenclatures... are still poorly developed" (Tokarev, 1958b: 4). The situation has considerably improved lately due to efforts by the American school of componential analysis,1 but we can hardly feel content with either the descriptive methods or, particularly, the way of denoting kinship relations used by the Americans. In this paper I attempt to introduce a language convenient to denote kinship relations, and propose some techniques for descriptions of kinship notation systems, including coordinate systems, tables, and graphs. These tools are used to describe two such systems: the Russian and the Iroquois (Seneca). Our discussion will be restricted to the notations of consanguineal relations alone; however, the apparatus proposed herein can well be used (with corresponding supplements) to describe systems beyond consanguinity. This brief communication is meant to suggest a formal description of a kinship system and aims at developing a corresponding formal apparatus. No contentual aspects involved in kinship systems (of historical, social, etc., nature) will be discussed; these can be found in the extensive literature published since L. H. Morgan's time. In Soviet specialist literature this problem is primarily dealt with by D. A. Olderogge (Olderogge, 1951, 1958, 1959, 1960a). 1

See, for instance, contributions to American Anthropologist, 67: 5 (1965), part 2. First published in Sovetskaja etnografija, N4 (1970).

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1.2. Two basic symbols will be used to denote kinship relations: C for 'child' and P for 'parent'. Anybody's status as a relative can be recorded as a sequence of symbols, e.g., CPP (decoded, 'child of the parents of the parents of Ego' — 'aunt/uncle', or djadja\tjotka in the Russian system). Thus our record proceeds from Alter to Ego. Let P following C denote parents (both) and a single parent in all other positions; let CP denote child of the parents of Ego other than Ego, that is, the sibling; thus the sequence CCPP will be decoded as 'child of the sibling of the parent' — a 'male or female cousin', or dvojurodnyj bratlsestra in the Russian system. Not every sequence of C and P is admissible in the sense that it may represent actual kinship relations. Thus excluded are sequences where P is followed by C. All allowable sequences can be determined based on Table 1. Table 1.

where (+) stands for an admissible sequence of the left and upper symbols whereas (—) eliminates such a sequence.

CCC... CPPP...P

Hence all admissible sequences have the form ·

. · —^ · or in k times / times short, C* Pl where k and / may be equal to 0, 1, 2..., etc. For instance, with k = 0 01 / = 0 our sequences will assume the formPP...P or CC ...C which represent lineal consanguineal relations. Note that the sequence Ck Pl is equivalent to the genealogical tree of the form shown in Fig. 1 which follows: closest common ancestor

k elements —

Figure 1.

/elements

Alter

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Thus, irrespective of sex, seniority, etc., each consanguineal relation has as its counterpart a couple of k and / values: for instance, the Russian syn/doch corresponds to (1,0) (CV = C); dedjbabka to (0,2), dvojurodnyj brat to (2,2), vnuchatyj pkmjannik to (3,1), etc. 1.3. Let us now introduce additional symbols m and/as sex indices to be attributed to our basic symbols C and P, e.g., CmCP for plemjannik. It is seen that the level of the Alters generation relative to Ego, p, is easy to find either by tracing the sequence or by taking the difference between the values of / and k; namely, p = / — k = (the number of P symbols subtracted that of C symbols). Let us also introduce two more values: m = min (k, Γ), that is, the lesser of the two numbers; Μ = max (k, Γ). Thus, for C1?3 (dvojurodnyj ded) m — I and M = 3. Let r denote the rank of a sequence, that is, the number of symbols in a sequence other than diacritics. For instance, for CmCfPP, r = 4. Evidently, r = k + /.

2. THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM 2.1. Assume that the Russian system of terms denoting consanguineal relations includes the following terms: otets (Pm), syn (Cm), ded (PmP), vnuk (CmC),Praded(PmPP\pravnuk (CmCC), brat (CmP), djadja (CmPP\ plemjannik (CmCP), dvojurodnyj brat (CmCPP), trojurodnyj brat (CmCCPPP), dvojurodnyj djadja (CmCPPP), dvojurodnyj plemjannik (CmCCPPP), dvojurodnyj ded (CmPPP), vnuchatyj plemjannik (CmCCP) and their female analogues denoted by the same sequences in which the initial symbol is supplied with the female index, /. In describing the Russian system it is advisable, in addition to the above terms which we shall refer to as actual, to consider potential terms like prapraded (great-grandfather) or trojurodnyj plemjannik (2nd cousin's son) which, though almost never used in fact, can be easily constructed ad hoc in accordance with well-known models, though a strict border between the two kinds of terms can hardly be drawn. Further we shall consider the entire system of terms, including potential ones, unless otherwise stated specifically. 2.2.

First, let us emphasize the major feature of the Russian system: C ... C P...P sequences like ·—v—- ^—v—·, where k and / are any integers, (0,1,2...), k times /times

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and the initial symbols bear a sex index, each corresponds to a single relationship term, in other words, a sequence of this type has only one counterpart among the terms, and each term among the sequences. Thus, factors which define a term to make it unique include: (1) α/ter's sex (S(a), for short); (2) the value of k; (3) the value of /. 2.3. To scrutinize the Russian system in more detail, let us make use of the fact that each sequence (disregarding the diacritics) corresponds to a pair of k and / values; this enables one to represent kinship relations as integer points in a coordinate system with the two axes for k and / values (see Fig. 2). The entire set of these points, or, otherwise stated, the totality of diacriticless CkPl sequences will be referred to as the space of kinship relations. Each point of this space corresponds to two terms, depending on S(a) (male terms alone are cited in Fig. 2). We shall assume this space to be divided into two layers based on the meaning of S(a). Indeed, one can well imagine two parallel planes (layers) corresponding to male and female terms, respectively, instead of one plane (only one layer is represented in Fig. 2). Note that the points corresponding to lineal kinship relations are found on the coordinate axes (that is, where k = Ο or / = Ο); the lines of generation levels (those all points of which correspond to relations characterized by the same value of/?) are the bisectrix and lines parallel to it (represented by the equation: / — k = p); the lines of rank level are straight lines at right angle to the bisectrix (/ + k = r). Points corresponding to conversion relations2 are symmetrical relative to the bisectrix.

Figure 2. 1

A relation conversional to a given one is that formed if Egο and Alter change places.

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Systems of Kinship Terminology

2.4. In addition to the above system, we shall use another system of coordinates with the m and p axes, where m = min (k, Γ), ρ = l — k (see Fig. 3 where only one of two layers [male] is shown again). Here lineal relationship points are located along the^-axis (where m = Ο); the generation level lines are horizontal straight lines; and conversion points are symmetrical relative to the w-axis.8

praded

dvojurodnyj praded

+3 ded

dvojurodnyj ded

trojurodnyj ded

otets

djadja

dvojurodnyj

brat

dvojurodnyj brat

syn

plemjamik

dvojurodnyj plemjannik

vnuk

vnuchatyj plemjannik

trojurodnyj vnuk

pravnuk

dvojurodnyj pravnuk

+2 djadja

+1 trojurodnyj brat

0 -1

·? 1

Figuur 3.

2.5. Besides the rank r (genealogical distance), let us introduce some other types of distances between Ego and Alter, namely:

pa = k2 + l\ and M = max (k, I). These three dimensions can be used (r, p2, and M) to construct three classifications of kinship relations in which we shall record only male terms and present potential terms in brackets (see Table 2). Note that the distance denoted by M provides the least fractional but most natural classification for the Russian system (more precisely, for one of its modern varieties): M = 1 covers members of the same family; M = 2, close relatives. • Some other coordinate systems can also be used, e.g., (r,p) or (M,p) where r=k+l (rank), and M=max (k, /). Note that any couple of numbers: (tn,p\ (r,p) or (M,p) defines kinship relations precisely (excluding sex); hence in Section II, two factors k and / could be replaced by any other couple.

152

YU. LEVIN

Table 2. Γ

1 2

3 4

5

6

Relations

P2

1 Otets, syn Brat, ded, vnuk 2 Djadja, plemjannik, 4 praded, pravnuk 5 Dvojurodnyj brat, dvojurodnyj ded, 8 vnuchatyj plemjan9 nik (prapraded, 10 prapravnuk) Dvojurodnyj djadja, dvojurodnyj plem13 jannik (dvojurodnyj praded, dvojurodnyj 16 pravnuk, praprapraded, praprapra17 vnuk) Trojurodnyj brat (trojurodnyj ded, 18 etc.) 20

Relations Otets, syn Brat Ded, vnuk Djadja, plenjannik Dvojurodnyj brat Praded, pravnuk Dvojurodnyj ded, vnuchatyj plemjannik Dvojurodnyj djadja dvojurodnyj plemjannik (prapraded, prapravnuk) (dvojurodnyj praded, dvojurodnyj pravnuk) Trojurodnyj brat (trojurodnyj ded, etc.)

Μ

Relations

1

Otets, syn, brat Ded, vnuk, djadja plemjannik, dvojurodnyj brat Praded, pravnuk. dvojurodnyj ded, vnuchatyj plemjannik, dvojurodnyj djadja, dvojurodnyj plemjannik, trojurodnyj brat (chetverojurodnyj brat, etcj

2

3

4

The above statement (Section 2.2) concerning denotation of kinship relations with specific terms needs further development: it is the value Μ that acts as the factor determining actual terminology, namely, those relations are denoted with actual terms for which Μ < 3 — in the (k, /) system this area is represented by the square defined as:

JO Ο. A simplification was made in Fig. 5: at m — 1 ,p = —2 the term vnuchatyj plemjannik is used in place of dvojurodnyj vnuk required by the logic of the system. 2.10. Again, p, m, and S(a) are structurally relevant factors, the latter

154

YU. LEVIN

being relevant where it is irrelevant lexically, that is, at/7 < Ο (except the point corresponding to the synjdocti). The presence of the adjective n-jurodnyj (n = 2, 3...) and the value of 'jurodnosf* in this adjective are determined by the values of \p \ and m, as seen from Table 3 (cf. Fig. 3). Table 3. ^^^^

m

0

1

>1

\P\ ^""-\ >1

—

(m+\)-jurodnyj

2, the prefix pra ... pra takes place.5 \p |—2 times

ded babka

djadja tjotka

brat seslra

plemjannik plemjannitsa

vmtk vnuchka

Figure 4. 4

'jurodnost' — a substantive formed of the adjective jurodnyj, something like "jurodnity" — Ed. 6 The Russian prefix pra- corresponds to German Ur- in words like Urgrossvater — Ed.

Systems of Kinship Terminology

155

v/

Λ

S

δ

£

156

YU. LEVIN

Table 4 sums up everything stated in 2.9.-2.10. This table enables one to define a term with the sequence CkPl, find/? = / — k and m = min (k, Γ) and see the term in the corresponding place of the table. Thus, C5P* gives k = 5; / = 6; p = 6 — 5 = l, m = min (5, 6) = 5 which yields pjatijurodnyj djadja. Table 4. m

Type of sequence

P

0

+1

f

£>ηρ.»+1

—2

£mpm + p

C

m+

0

>1

m

C"1/""

/••m-f 1 pm

>+2

S(a)

m

\p\P

brat

—

m

Otets

f

Matj

m

Syn

f

Doch

sesfra m-jurodnyj(aya)*

djadja tjotka

plemj imik

tsa

m

ded

f

babka

m f

(m+l)-jurodnyj(aja)* pro . . . pro \p\-2 times

k** vnu chka

* Assume that odnojurdonyj is the 'zero word*. ·* The only exception (rnuchatyj plentfannlk) has been mentioned.

The same table can be used to construct a sequence from a known term. Thus, take trojurodnyj prapravnuk; the corresponding term is found in the lowest cell; w + 1 = 3, \p\ — 2 = 2 with a negative;?; find m = 2, /? = — 4. According to our formulas, k — max (m, m — /?), / = max (m, m + p), find k — max (2, 2 + 4) = 6, 1 = max (2, 2 — 4) = 2. Hence the sequence sought is C«P2 — CCCCCCPP.

3. THE SENECA SYSTEM 3.1. L. H. Morgan (Morgan, 1871) collected information on the Seneca kinship system a structural analysis of which was carried out by F. Lounsbury (Lounsbury, 1964: 1073). In fact, our results will be similar to the latter's but they are obtained with considerably less effort because of a more convenient kinship notation.

Systems of Kinship Terminology

157

First, let us introduce some new symbols unnecessary when analyzing the Russian system. It will be allowed to supplement every sequence with the symbol e (Ego) which can be indexed for sex, like C and P: e.g., CmCPef for nephew (of a female Ego). Further, seniority will be denoted by above-lined and juniority by underlined symbols, e.g., CmPe (elder brother) or QfPe (younger sister). Further, we shall need the following denotations: v(x) for x's age: 5(2) — the sex of the second member of the sequence, and S(n) — that of its last member. 3.2. Let us now draw a table (Table 5) of Seneca kinship terminology provided with respective sequences for each term. We shall use Lounsbury's table of these terms; his sequences have been translated into the language of C and P terms applied by us, which makes it possible to greatly reduce the number of sequences to be cited (see Column A). Column B contains generalized formulas (with dots) of those from column A. Column C contains general formulas (C*JP') for classified terms as well as the features (factors) underlying the grouping of these terms and enabling a term to be distinguished within its group. These can be easily seen if we scrutinize Column B with sufficient care. Note that p and m in Column B have the same meanings as in Section II, that is, p is the generation level (= / — k), m = min (k, l). 3.3. The results obtained from Column B, Table 5, can be conveniently represented by a graph (tree) (see Fig. 6 which, among other things, proves that the factors distinguished are sufficient to identify each term). These factors are broken into four types (according to the maximum possible number of tree levels); some of these can prove redundant, namely: (a) Generation level, p, at values < —2 —1, 0, +1, > +2. (b) Correlation between the sexes of two members of the sequence, namely, 2 and e (at/? = —1), 2 and n (at/? = 0), σ and η (atp = -f 1); for p > 2 this factor is redundant. Its values are = and ^.' (c) Alter's sex S(d), is redundant, only atp = 0; 5(2) Φ S(n). Its values are m and/. (d) Miscellaneous, including: (1) Ego's sex, S(e), at p = —1, 5(2) ^ S(e); m or/; (2) Alter's relative age (v(a) ~ v(e)) atp = 0,5(2) = 5(/i). Its values are >, v(e)

8

hePkέ:P

the same

9

ahtsiP

C,P, CfCfPPf, CfCmPPm, C/CmCPPPMetc.;

10

khePkt.P

the same

11

akya'.Pse:P

CCmPPft CCfPPm, CCmCPPPf, CCfCPPP» etc.

12

he:awak

C», CmCmPem, CmCfPef, CmCmCPPemDm, CmCfCPPef, CmCmCCPPPem etc.

13

khe'.awak

Cf, CfCmPem, CfCfPef, CfCmCPPea, CfCfCPPef, CfCmCCPPPem etc.

14

heye:wo:teP

CmCfPem, CmCfCPPe„, CmCfCCPPPem etc.

15

hehs Pneh

CmCmPef, C„C„CPPef, C„C„CCPPPef etc.

16

kheye:wo:teP

CfCfPem, CfCfCPPem, CfCfCCPPPem etc.

17

khehsoPneh

CfCmPef, CfCmCPPef, CfCmCCPPPef etc.

18

heya:teP

CmC, CmCCP, CmCCCPP etc.; CmCC etc.

19

kheya:teP

C/C, C/CCP, C/CCCPPetc; C/CCetc.

7

* - χ - any sex index ** - xy - different sex indexes

v(a)>v(e) CfCfCPPPf, v(a)>v(e) v(a)>v(e)

159

Systems of Kinship Terminology

B. General form of sequences

C. Clustering

PmP...P,CmC...CP...P(i=l,2...;j=2,3,...)

j i J+i PfP...P,CfC...CP...P(i=l,2...;j=2,3,...)

£mpm + p

S(a) = m

P> +2

5(e)=/

j i J+i Pm,CmC...CP...PPm(i=l,2...;j=2,3,...)

i i+l Pf,C/C...CP...PP,(i=l,2...;j=2,3,...)

5(1β;)β5(Λ) £^Zf! ^ 5(e)=/

i i+l CmC...CP...PP,(i=l,2...)

Cm p m + I

ι i+l CfC...CP...PPm(i=l,2...)

ι r c-r \-j-a \ S(a)=m P-+I S(a)^S(n) S(a)=f

i

i+l

cmps cmcxc...cp...ppxe.* 0=2, 3...) i ι CmPe, CmCxC. ..CP...PPxe(i=l,2...) i i

C,Pf.,CfCxC...CP...PPIe(i=l,2...) i i CfPe,CfC,C...CP...PPx.(i=\,2...) i i CCxC...CP...PP,**(i=l,2...) i i Cm,CmCxC...CP...Pex(i=l,2,...)

S(a)-mV(a')>v(e') v(a)v(e) v(a)